Bog Bothy is a touring collection of new work, built outcomes, and ambitious proposals toward a new peatlands architecture, presented by the Irish Architecture Foundation and 12th Field.

Bog Bothy is touring to Girley Bog, Co. Meath on 16-17 August during National Heritage Week, following a successful run in Clara.

Bog Bothy includes a new Bothy shelter, an exhibition of photographs by Shane Hynan and drawings by 12th Field, work by artist in residence Luke Casserly, and a public programme of workshops, tours and performances on our evolving relationship with Ireland’s peatlands through the lens of architecture and placemaking.

The bothy structure has been co-created with communities in Offaly, Louth and Meath and designed by architects Evelyn D’Arcy and David Jameson of 12th Field.

All events are free but must be booked in advance.

Saturday 16 August:
11:00 – 11:30 Bog Bothy Launch and Tea Ceremony
11:30 – 12:30 Guided Bothy Tour with 12th Field
13:30 – 15:00 Novel Ecologies Workshop with Fiona Nulty and Helen Flanagan
15:15 – 17:00 What A Bog Remembers – Workshop with Luke Casserly
17:30 – 19:00 An Evening with Friends of Ardee Bog

Sunday 17 August:
7:00 – 8:30 Moth Trapping Workshop
11:00 – 12:30 Bog Bothy Tour with 12th Field
13:00-15:00 Bog Lab and Zine Workshop with Elena Aitova & Kate Flood

Event is FREE to attend but booking is advised due to limited space – book here: https://libcal.ucc.ie/event/4388342

Join us for an insightful half-day seminar exploring how contemporary artists engage with archives in their creative practice. Through artist presentations and a panel discussion, we will examine the dynamic ways artists are reimagining archival material, drawing from personal, public, and institutional collections.

This event will also highlight collaborative projects between artist Elize de Beer and artist/archivist Barbra Diener who are exploring the Liam Kennedy Collection housed at the UCC Special Collections Library. They will speak to how such partnerships can unlock new narratives and expand the boundaries of both artistic and archival work.
Whether you are an artist, researcher, student, or art enthusiast, this seminar offers a unique opportunity to hear from artists and archivists working at the intersection of memory, heritage, and contemporary art.
This seminar has been funded and supported by UCC Special Collections Library as well as Sample-Studios through the Studios of Sanctuary Programme funded by Rethink Ireland Resilient Cork Fund and Community Foundation Ireland.

Galway Arts Centre is pleased to announce ‘The Air We Share’, a major group exhibition of works developed through a year-long artist residency programme, exploring air quality, climate, and our shared environment through artistic collaboration and community engagement in Galway.

‘The Air We Share’ brings together the work of artists Christopher Steenson, Leon Butler and the artist collective a place of their own (Sam Vardy and Paula McCloskey) who, over the last nine months have worked with scientists, residents, and community groups to creatively respond to real-world air pollution research and lived experience in Westside, Galway aiming to deepen public understanding of air and its critical role in our shared environment.

The exhibition will be officially opened on Saturday 16 August 2025 at 2pm by Deputy Mayor of Galway City Alan Cheevers with guest speaker Annie Fletcher, Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art. All are welcome to attend.

‘The Air We Share’ brings together a consortium of local partners, which is led by Galway City Council and includes Galway Arts Centre, the University of Galway’s Centre for Creative Technologies, the Centre for Climate and Air Pollution Studies and the Insight SFI Centre for Data Analytics, Westside Resource Centre, and Galway Culture Company.

The resulting works featured in the exhibition include; Leon Butler’s ‘Phosphene’ a project that transforms real-time air quality data into sculptural and digital forms, inviting community members to co-design how environmental data is experienced and interpreted, Christopher Steenson’s ‘Where does the body end’ reflects on air pollution and breath through sound walks, writing, and workshops, linking live data with personal and collective experience and ‘a place of their own’ (Paula McCloskey & Sam Vardy) ‘The 9 Freedoms for the Air’ a speculative, collaborative artwork imagining future air rights, developed through participatory workshops with residents, scientists, and legal experts.

The exhibition will be on view from 16 August to 21 September 2025, with a programme of talks, guided tours, and public events taking place throughout its duration. Please see https://www.galwayartscentre.ie/whats-on/thursday-evenings-at-galway-arts-centre/ for more info.

A very special thanks to collaborators Karena Ryan, Alena Postnikova, Gary Stewart and to the participants The Red Bird Youth Collective & all the members of the Westside Community who brought their collaborative creativity to the projects.

‘The Air We Share’ is a recipient of the Creative Climate Action Fund, an initiative of the Creative Ireland Programme, funded by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media in collaboration with the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications.

For more information please visit www.theairweshare.ie

In To the Edge of Your World, Dutch-born, Ireland-based artist Anita Groener uses humble materials—twigs, cardboard, cut paper—to explore themes of loss, displacement, and resilience. Her intricately constructed sculptures and drawings reflect on the shared human impact of migration, conflict, and remembrance, shaped in part by her travels through the American South and global regions affected by upheaval. The exhibition also features the premiere of Shelter, a new animated video created in collaboration with filmmaker Matt Kresling and the Talbot Interfaith Shelter. Drawing from personal narratives, Shelter highlights stories of perseverance and community, echoing the exhibition’s meditation on belonging, memory, and the human capacity to endure.

This Exhibition is supported by Culture Ireland.

Every Saturday
7 Jun. – 16. Aug. 2025, 11 am
€15 pp

Learn all about the art and life of Jack B. Yeats in this 45-minute guided tour of the exhibition The Dreaming Road. Led by an expert curator, the tour explores Yeats’ life, his love of Sligo and how it is reflected in all of his art. Enjoy private time in the gallery for an intimate, focused viewing experience while gaining deeper insight into one of Ireland’s most iconic painters. Perfect for art enthusiasts, curious visitors, and anyone looking to connect with Yeats’ unique artistic legacy.

For larger groups (10 or more) please contact info@themodel.ie before booking.

You can view a video with further information on Instagram HERE

Cork Heritage Day is a wonderful celebration of Cork’s built heritage. In its 20th year, Cork Heritage Open Day provides the exciting opportunity to meet some artists, & see where they work within this unique artists’ workplace.
National Sculpture Factory was set up 36 years ago & is a thriving artists’ resource for many creative projects. An important facility locally, nationally & internationally, NSF is primarily Arts Council funded, supported by Cork City Council.
You are invited to visit NSF facilities and artists in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere and learn more about the creative process directly from the source. Join us on Saturday 16th August from 12 – 4 pm to meet the artists, discover where they work and find out more about their practice.
Guided tours will take place every hour starting at 12pm through 3pm (last tour 3pm). No booking necessary. For Health & Safety reasons, under 16’s must be accompanied by an adult.

Celebrating the adoption of the publication Stone Mad by Seamus Murphy for Cork’s One City One Book, Seamus Murphy’s legacy as stone carver and sculptor is seen as vibrant and alive, in the quality of those who continue in the medium.

As part of the events of Heritage Week in a presentation by National Sculpture Factory and Cork City Libraries, sculptor Michael Quane will talk about his work and his field as a stone carver whose work is currently exhibited nationally and internationally. This is a free event but as space is limited booking is necessary.

Michael Quane is a Cork-born contemporary sculptor who studied science at UCC before attending the Crawford College of Art. His work explores relationships between animals and people that are dynamic and fluid, often combining strength and humour.  His medium is stone carving, in limestone and marble. Michael has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally, as well as several large-scale publicly sited sculptures such as Horses and Riders at the Mallow roundabout, the very unusual sculpted plant at Botanic Gardens, Dublin and the Tomás O’Criomthain work at the Blasket Island Heritage Centre.

Like collective dreams, video games and virtual worlds are the digital fairytales of the 21st century, both shallow and deep, they are bottomless in their potential for adventure.

Drop by Triskel Arts Centre for an afternoon event showcasing the digital worlds and stories of indie video games and other electric realities created by local artists and developers.

All ages are welcome to drop in and see the virtual worlds on display.
Indie game devs and other virtual world makers are welcome to bring a laptop and show off what they are working on.
If you hope to showcase a project or have questions, please contact the event organiser Daniel Murray at daniel@loom.cafe

Sun 17 Aug 2025 – 13:00

Muine Bheag Arts is thrilled to welcome artist Lily O’Shea as part of COMMUNE. Lily will present a new body of work, a framework for me and you, which responds to conditions of precarity within the context of the housing crisis and points towards alternative ways of looking at space and home.

Lily will lead a tour of her public sculpture series, along with a reading by Ali O’Shea who has written a text in response to the work. This will be followed by an open discussion with members of CATU.

More information and booking here: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/tour-with-artist-lily-oshea-discussion-with-catu-17th-august-2pm-tickets-1510992672759?aff=oddtdtcreator

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Lily O’Shea is a visual artist based in Cork, working across sculpture, drawing, and writing. Through woodwork, she creates quasi-sculptural forms that develop into immersive installations, integrating technical drawings and reflective texts. Lily’s research-based practice explores different methods of survival in a fluctuating ideological structure, while emphasizing the need to reclaim and redefine our relationship with time.

In 2025, Lily was awarded the Evolve Practice Award by Fire Station Artists’ Studios, where she completed a three-month residency. Recent work has featured in Bless The Corners of This House (Bloomers, Cork, 2025), The Collision Project (screen service, Dublin, 2024), and CCA Introducing (Centre for Contemporary Art, Derry, 2024). Lily is a recent recipient of the Visual Arts Bursary and Agility Award (2024), and was previously supported by the Creative Practitioner Bursary from Galway City Council in 2023.

Community Action Tenants Union (CATU) is a membership-based Union for Communities & Tenants in Ireland with active branches across the country. CATU was founded in Dublin in 2019 by a few dozen tenants, to help share resources and skills to empower themselves and their neighbours facing eviction, homelessness and housing precarity.

COMMUNE is kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Carlow Arts Office, Creative Ireland Carlow and Bagenalstown Creative Places

Sunday 17th August 2025 – 2pm

Exhibition continues 12th August  – 30th September 2025.
Presented across both St Brigid’s Cathedral and the Round Tower, the exhibition honours the legacy of Brigid, celebrating her enduring presence as a figure of inspiration, compassion, and hope. The Cathedral showcases the original artworks within its sacred setting, while the Round Tower hosts an immersive display of illuminated replicas featuring imagery of Brigid. Installed across its nine windows and within the unique overhead space at the tower’s summit, the work allows natural light to filter through, creating a modest yet powerful tribute. This transforms the Round Tower into a radiant symbol of hope and offers a unique experience. Through the interplay of light, space, and imagery, the exhibition invites visitors to reflect on Brigid’s role as a unifying symbol in Irish heritage, creating a dialogue between tradition and innovation and encouraging contemplation on the values she embodies and their continued relevance in the modern world.

Exhibition continues 16th May 2025 – 7th September 2025.

This exhibition centres upon a thirteenth-century manuscript copy of al-Iṣṭakhrī’s book from the Chester Beatty’s Arabic Collection and a commissioned response by contemporary artist Diaa Lagan.

Meticulously-labelled, al-Iṣṭakhrī’s full-page maps apply pre-modern techniques of exaggerated scale and schematic distortion to deliver both geographical data and an undeniably visual spectacle. These beautiful maps present a poignant visualisation of the world we know today.

Diaa Lagan is an artist based in Dublin. Typically layered in multiple viewpoints and references, Lagan’s powerful work deals with multiple perspectives on the conscious human sense of place, both local and global, and on our enduring relational connectivity to one another.

Lagan’s geo-spatial awareness is also central to al-Iṣṭakhrī’s book and its regional map survey. Glimpses of al-Iṣṭakhrī’s stark maps shimmer under the many layers of Lagan’s paintings, interwoven with modern themes and post-colonial perspectives.

For Lagan, these loaded landscapes offer interregional routeways, defined less by controlled frontiers than by the natural historic flow of human travel through a borderless world.

Exhibition continues 2nd August – 30th August 2025.

This exhibition features a collection of book illustrations, artwork and new etchings by artist Shona Shirley Macdonald. An award-winning illustrator and author living in Co. Waterford, she specialises in children’s books and large-scale murals. Her debut picture book, ‘The Pooka Party’ was selected for the 2020 IBBY Honour List and received multiple award nominations. Her recent collaboration, ‘Girls Who Slay Monsters’, won the Children’s An Post Book of the Year Award 2022 and was nominated for the 2024 Yoto Carnegie Medal for illustration.
Exhibition runs untils 30th August.

Drawing on the Past – Wicklow Discoveries.
Exhibition: 18–31 August 2025 | Signal Arts Centre, Bray.
Heritage Week Workshop: 19 August 2025.

Signal Arts Centre presents Drawing on the Past – Wicklow Discoveries, an exhibition curated by Déantán and supported by the Institute of Archaeologists of Ireland (IAI). Running from 18–31 August 2025, the exhibition features work by artist Róisín O Meadhra, who reimagines Wicklow’s archaeological artefacts through the traditional craft of archaeological illustration and contemporary artistic interpretation.
“This project reawakens archaeological artefacts through visual interpretation, connecting people with their cultural heritage in fresh and accessible ways,” says curator Joanne O Meadhra.

As part of National Heritage Week, a free workshop on 19 August (10 am – 1 pm) introduces participants to the art of archaeological illustration. All materials provided; BOOKING REQUIRED See Eventbrite https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/archaeological-artefact-drawing-workshop-with-roisin-o-meadhra-tickets-1474609228899?aff=oddtdtcreator
Both events form part of Déantán Micro Events, celebrating heritage through creative programming.

Exhibition continues 2 – 31 August 2025.

‘Anarchive’, curated by Ciara Corscadden Hennessy of the 126 Gallery Board of directors

Exhibiting Artists:
Amanda Hunt – Aisling Monds – Amanda Walker – Aodán McCardle – Barbara Allen – Brian Brown – Caroline Kuyper – Caroline Vesey – Catherine Canning – Ian Handschuh – David Gepp – Deborah Stockdale – Deirdre Doherty – Fiona Carlin – Frances Bermingham Berrow – Frank Boyce – Gillian Wright – Hans van Meeuwen – Heather McLaughlin – Helen Hancock – Ian Wieczorek – Jacqui Deveney-Reed – Joanne McLaughlin – John McCarron – Josephine Kelly – Karen McLaughlin – Kevin Harkin – Maeve Peoples – Martin Hughes – Mary Connors – Mary-Joyce Davis – Melissa Carton – Myriam Rommers – Nina Quigley – Noel Connor – Paul Campbell – Rikki Louise van den Berg – Seamus Gallagher – Sinéad Smyth – Sinéad Walsh – Stella Norrby – Stephen Cavanagh – Sue Morris – Susan Kyle – Una Walker – Vanessa Marsh – Veronica Buchanon – William-Alexander

PRICE: €150.

VENUE: CREATIVE ZONE, BOOLE LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK

TIMES: MONDAY – THURSDAY, 18-21 AUGUST.

TALKS: 10:30AM-12:30PM.

OPTIONAL SITE VISIT: 1:30-2:30PM.

DAY 1, MONDAY 18 AUG: MONASTIC IRELAND:

In this introduction to the summer school, we briefly discuss the role that visual culture plays in our understanding of history. This will be followed by an in-depth talk on the history of Monastic Ireland, examining the visual forms associated with sites such as the Abbey of Kells, exploring how trade and conquest during the Viking raids produced patterns of visual exchange with areas such as Iona. We will interpret the visual forms of The Book of Kells to understand how faith and aesthetics intertwined, and we will also explore the development of a native symbolic mythology through the famous yet mysterious Sheela na Gig sculptures.

Afternoon Site Visit: Cork Public Museum

DAY 2, TUESDAY 19 AUG: IRELAND IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT:

We delve into the most prosperous period for Irish Art since the monastic period, turning our attention to the Age of Enlightenment in the long nineteenth century. This saw a dramatic surge in the development of visual art and literature throughout Europe. This was equally true in Ireland; still a part of the British Empire, Irish artists nonetheless drew on the prevailing Neoclassicism and Romanticism to create a distinctly Irish identity. We will discuss artists including John Hogan and Daniel Maclise, also exploring the impact that classical sculpture and broader European visual developments had through the development of the Cork School of Art and the local collection.

Afternoon Site Visit: St Finbarr’s Cathedral

DAY 3, WEDNESDAY 20 AUGUST: IRISH MODERNISM:

Modernity brought about an increasingly integrated and globalised world through industrial and technological developments. Alongside these developments, visual artists strove to develop new ways in which a radically shifting world could be visualised. With these new phenomena in mind, we will explore how artists in Ireland developed a distinctly Irish modernism, both through travel and cultural exchange with our ever-more accessible European neighbours, and in response to the specific issues that faced Irish identity at the turn of the twentieth century.

Afternoon Site Visit: The Honan Chapel

DAY 4, THURSDAY 21 AUGUST: CONTEMPORARY ART IN IRELAND:

We finish our journey through the history of Irish art by turning our attention to the here and now. In the present day, Irish artists are beset with the question that faces artists the world over – what does it feel like to be alive today? In the twenty-first century, this means a melting pot of cultures, media, visual forms, and meanings. Contemporary Irish art represents this diversity – in today’s lecture, we survey some of the most prominent Irish contemporary artists, exploring how their practice advances both visual culture and the most pressing issues that face us in the present climate. Today’s lecture will include an artist talk from Cork-based visual artist Lara Quinn, a recent graduate of MTU Crawford College of Art & Design, whose powerful work incorporates a sophisticated art historical lens and mythological sources within arresting imagery of feminine archetypes.

Afternoon Site Visit: Sample-Studios Gallery, The Lord Mayor’s Pavilion.

Exhibition continues 24th July 2025 to 31st of August.

Sample-Studios is delighted to host our Annual Members Summer Exhibition 2025 in Sample-Studios Gallery, The Lord Mayor’s Pavilion in Fitzgerald’s Park. 40 of our 160+ members will be represented in a wonderfully rich and diverse exhibition, showcasing the richness and diversity of work being produced by our community of contemporary artists. This exhibition is a unique opportunity for audiences to engage with new work across a range of media by a significant number of emerging and established contemporary artists working in and around Cork.

This exhibition features painting, print, drawing, and photography by 40 Sample-Studios members: Hina Khan, Viktoria Kondratieva, Etaoin Melville, Struàn Bell, Annie Forrester, Anthony Murphy, Tetiana Milshyna, Amal Hope, Chris Finnegan, Niamh Hughes, Kim-Ling Morris, Laurie Legrand, Siobhán Gillies, Jacqueline O’Driscoll, Barbara Diener, Rebecca Bradley, Joseph Heffernan, Ben Reilly, Thea Mercer, Éadaoin Glynn, Aisling MacCallion, Grace Haynes, Fiona Boniwell, Sarah Buckley, Amna Walayat, Síomha Callanan, Oonagh Hurley, Leah Murphy, Angela Gilmour, Bernadette Doolin, Michaela McCann, Ann Lambe, Siobhán Collins, Sinéad Barrett, Emma Jacobs, Aisling Roche, Leslie Allen Spillane, Dee Hurley, Mary Cooke, Catherine Callanan.

Gerard Sexton, Creative Director of The Market Gallery, Douglas, will offer opening remarks at the Opening Reception on 24 July from 7:30-9pm. Light refreshments will be served and all are welcome to attend.

This year, we are particularly excited to bring our Annual Members Summer Exhibition on tour! After it concludes in Sample-Studios Gallery, The Lord Mayor’s Pavilion, the works will travel to The Market Gallery in Douglas, where the exhibition will be on display from 5 September – 4 October.

Exhibition continues 15th August – 20th September 2025. 
Mary Cullen-Kelly presents Carousel.
15th August – 20th September at Dunamaise Arts Centre.
Free to visit during opening hours, and 1 hour prior events (Tues to Sat, 1pm to 5pm).

Mary Cullen Kelly likes to time travel using paint, print and collage. Her colourful and detailed images can feel all at once familiar and strange. She creates moments and places that may or may not have existed. She is interested in and has studied the experience of Flow Theory in relation to art making.

Mary was awarded this solo exhibition as a prize from our Open Submission Show 2024 by Guest Selector Vera Klute, RHA.

About the Artist
Mary is an artist from Dublin who lives in Carlow. She has a degree in Fine Art Print from NCAD and an MSc in Disability Studies from UCD, which focussed on the experience of engagement in arts activities, for which she won the Eunice Kennedy Shriver medal. She has previously exhibited in VISUAL Carlow and extensively in group and open submission shows, including the RHA Annual. Mary has been involved in community arts in Dublin and Carlow. See more on www.marycullenkelly.com

The exhibition title references the TV series MadMen; there the ‘carousel’ is a Kodak slide projector that ‘moves the viewer forwards and backwards’ in time.
This series of paintings, prints and objects seek to describe a world that can feel familiar and strange all at the same time. Things are always changing. The artist draws on science fiction movies from the 50s and 60s. Colourful paintings of domestic and ‘small town’ settings draw us in with a whiff of nostalgia, a sense of the familiar which is subverted as things are not quite as expected. Photopolymer prints and made objects offer clues that the world we are in has been altered. Flora and other items have appeared nearby. Questions are posed but not answered. The world has changed and we are not quite sure where we are.

1pm Tuesday 19 August 2025.
In-person at Civic Trust House, 50 Pope’s Quay, Cork, T23 R6XC.

Spotlight on a national treasure!

Members of the public are invited to attend our in-person talk during Heritage Week that will focus on the conservation of a true national treasure.

The Goose Girl (1888) is a much loved oil painting by Edith Somerville in the collection of Crawford Art Gallery.

The Goose Girl is now the subject of conservation treatment while the doors of Crawford Art Gallery are closed for its major redevelopment. Supported by the Heritage Council through the Heritage Stewardship Fund 2025, this crucial work will ensure the historic painting’s future.

This public talk will shed new light on the painting, exploring its history and the steps being taken to care for it in Crawford Art Gallery’s new mobile conservation laboratory. This talk will feature three speakers: conservator Chiara Chillè, registrar Jean O’Donovan, and curator Michael Waldron.

This initiative underscores Crawford Art Gallery’s commitment to best-practice heritage care, adhering to a principle of minimal intervention—carrying out only those treatments necessary to stabilise and preserve the original condition of an artwork.

Gallery 545 at La Roche House, Belfast & online.

Opening – Wed 20 August, 5.30-8.30pm.
Open Thu-Sat 11am-6pm, Sun 11am-4pm.
Online https://gallery545.com – always open.

Gallery 545 presents ‘Re-imagined Places’, an exhibition of original artworks inspired by landscapes created by accomplished artists based in Northern Ireland. A diverse art selection will be on display at La Roche House, from beautiful views of Northern Ireland to evocative imaginary lands, exquisite foliage motives, vibrant abstract paintings, and colourful glass pieces.

This show features Justė Bernotaitė, Lisa Ballard, Louise Lennon, Alison Lowry, Rosie McGurran, Maria Perry, Latisha Reihill, and Anushiya Sundaralingam, who like many other contemporary artists, continue to find inspiration in natural surroundings. While echoing their visual qualities, these artists re-imagine places, reinventing them with colour palettes, atmospheres and moods to convey their own unique experience of them.

Viewers will have the opportunity to be taken on a visual and emotional journey through landscapes and enjoy art in the relaxing and stunning interiors of the modernist La Roche House.

‘Re-imagined Places’ is curated by Francesca Biondi, Art Director & Curator of Gallery 545.

Artworks will be available to view and purchase in person at La Roche House, or online at www.gallery545.com.

For further information contact Francesca Biondi hello@gallery545.com, T 07960 130414

Artists – All the exhibiting artists are represented by Gallery 545. More information about their practice and images of their and works are on the gallery’s website.

Gallery 545 – Gallery 545 is an online gallery with exhibitions at physical venues specialising in contemporary art of Northern Ireland. The gallery showcases and supports accomplished artists based in the region, and brings a diverse and original art selection to those who love contemporary art. https://gallery545.com

La Roche House – Designed by L.A. Roche in 1962, La Roche House is a stunning mid-century modern home in the heart of Belfast. Available for gallery space, film location, private parties, and corporate events. https://www.larochehouse.com

Image – Lisa Ballard, Blue Sky Mountains, 2025, oil and spray paint on canvas, 120 x 90 x 2 cm

1pm Wednesday 20 August 2025
Online via Zoom

Spotlight on a national treasure!

Members of the public are invited to attend an online talk during Heritage Week that will focus on the conservation of a true national treasure.

The Goose Girl (1888) is a much loved oil painting by Edith Somerville in the collection of Crawford Art Gallery.

The Goose Girl is now the subject of conservation treatment while the doors of Crawford Art Gallery are closed for its major redevelopment. Supported by the Heritage Council through the Heritage Stewardship Fund 2025, this crucial work will ensure the historic painting’s future.

This public talk will shed new light on the painting, exploring its history and the steps being taken to care for it in Crawford Art Gallery’s new mobile conservation laboratory. This talk will feature three speakers: conservator Chiara Chillè, registrar Jean O’Donovan, and curator Michael Waldron.

This initiative underscores Crawford Art Gallery’s commitment to best-practice heritage care, adhering to a principle of minimal intervention—carrying out only those treatments necessary to stabilise and preserve the original condition of an artwork.

Join Shreya Shah for the opening of her first solo show on 20th August, 6pm at Gallery X, Dublin.
No booking required, there will be some Indian snacks and drinks.

Artist Bio: Shreya Shah is an Indian artist, originally from the west of India (Gujarat). She moved to Ireland 8 years ago and studied part-time at NCAD. The Indian education system shaped her to pursue engineering, but it never resonated with her being. She always painted to feed her soul and recently quit her corporate tech job to follow her heart.

Irish and Indian ancient spiritual practices inspire Shreya’s work, with fire being a central theme of her solo show. Through this body of work, Shreya is connecting to her ‘Inner Fire’ and inviting the viewers to interact with the works and further tend to their inner fire.

Shreya’s multi-disciplinary arts practice includes paintings, installations and socially engaged ceremonies/meditations. As part of this solo exhibition, there will be a fire ceremony with Kali dance in a forest near Dublin, and some meditations and women’s circles inside the gallery space. Both events are free. If you are interested in attending them, send an email to her shreyashah950@gmail.com or follow her on Instagram – https://instagram.com/surrealistshreya

Discover how ancient burning practices, wild plants, and disappearing traditions still shape our cultural landscape.

Join us with artist-in-residence Shane Finan for a public talk on his fascinating work with FIRECULT, (https://jpi-climate.eu/project/firecult/) an international project exploring how wildfire impacts cultural heritage. Shane delves into Irish upland traditions—particularly the historic burning of aiteann (furze/gorse)—and how fire was once both a tool and a symbol in rural life. From folklore to flora, he transforms aiteann and sitka spruce into drawing charcoal to tell a story of loss, resilience, and renewal.

Wildfire is a natural earth system process in close interactive relationship with human activity since prehistoric times, that has shaped cultural landscapes and defined ways of life. Humans use fire to modify their landscape, clear land for agriculture and development and replenish soil nutrients.

At the same time, fire’s destructive power endangers livelihoods and landscapes. Anthropogenic climate change disrupts the fine balance between wildfire and humans, directly through its influence on the natural environment and indirectly by impacting on societal structures and behaviours, threatening tangible and intangible cultural heritage. To this day, there is little understanding on the role of wildfire in damaging or creating cultural heritage.

False Kingdoms a solo exhibition presented by Kaye Maahs will be shown in the upstairs gallery space. Maahs’ practice is devoted to the pursuit of painting. With the aid of photography, she documents moments, places and environments. Images are utilised as navigation props for assistance when she paints.
Maahs’ has held numerous solo exhibitions and has participated in multiple group shows nationally. Award. She has won many awards including the Thomas Dammann Junior Memorial Trust Award and the Hunt Museums Curator’s Choice award.

Please join us on the evening of Thursday 21 August 2025, 6-8pm, opening remarks by Anne Hodge, National Gallery of Ireland and Katriona Gillespie, manager of the Custom House Studios + Gallery.
This exhibition is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Mayo County Council.

Exhibiting a sculpture relief titled, Gospel of Abhainn / Naomh Abhainn/ carpet page -exhibition in the historical Hamilton Vault Studios between 21st August and 28th August 2025 for a group exhibition. Medieval marginalia- illustrations or notations in the margins of manuscripts. We will be exploring the fascinating and insightful world of the drawings and writings created in the margins of old manuscripts by monks, nuns and scholars. These varied from the highly decorative to the humorous; think animals playing musical instruments.

Thursday 21 August – Tuesday 30 September 2025

Curated by Margarita Cappock 

Nach Cuma? Who Cares? is an exhibition that explores the politics of care and responsibility with a focus on class and race within working class communities in Dublin. Developed out of a series of collaborative workshops with youth and adult groups in Rialto, Bluebell and Ballymun the project responds to an alarming rise in hate-driven rhetoric and division, particularly within working-class spaces. 

This exhibition follows on from Carey’s earlier work Stones, which focused on the relationship between individuals and place in Ballymun. Where Stones honed in on one community, Nach Cuma? expands to hold space across multiple sites, bringing people into slow, honest conversations about difficult truths and lived realities. Through a dialogical process and workshops within The LAB Gallery, the exhibition becomes a platform for intergenerational dialogue and reflection. Rejecting tokenism and reactionary politics, the work seeks instead to centre care and asks: who provides it, who receives it, and what happens when it is absent? Through visual, social, and dialogic forms, Nach Cuma? offers not conclusions but a methodology: one of listening, reflection, and accountability.

The exhibition will open on Thursday 21st August: 6pm – 8pm 

The exhibition will be opened by Willa White.

Aaron Sunderland Carey is a Dublin-based socially engaged artist and youth worker working across community spaces, youth clubs, and both informal and formal educational settings. His work investigates the intersections of land, class, masculinity, community, and systemic oppression. Central to his practice is the use of long-term collaboration, often with marginalised groups, to foster spaces for difficult, necessary conversations. At the core of this long-term practice is over three years of collaboration with Rialto Youth Project and a life spent in Ballymun making art and working with the community of Ballymun. Aaron’s work is grounded in ethics of care and accountability and is influenced by his hometown of Ballymun. He employs methods rooted in listening, reflection, and mutual learning—facilitating workshops that prioritise community voice and agency. He has worked extensively in areas such as Ballymun and Rialto, developing partnerships with youth projects, community organisations and local schools.

Aaron has participated in numerous socially engaged residencies and projects, including Common Grounds Studio 468, and has collaborated with groups including Rialto Youth Project, Poppintree youth project, The Axis Ballymun and The LAB Gallery. His practice sits between visual art, storytelling, and social action—always aiming to make space for storytelling and transformation.

The Fresh to the Salt is a two-person exhibition by visual artists Angie Shanahan & Bridget Flannery (posthumously 1959 – 2024) which will be shown in the main gallery space. The exhibition consists of drawings and paintings responding to the artists’ engagement with coastal and riverine landscapes through drawing, sketch booking and mapping. History, placenames and local studies also feed into their preoccupation with the sense of place.

Angie Shanahan’s current practice involves landscape impacted by human presence usually set within a specific water defined place, the coast. She has had numerous solo exhibitions and has participated in numerous group shows nationwide.

During her lifetime, Bridget Flannery’s work was mainly focused on painting and drawing. She consistently exhibited in solo and group shows in Ireland and Europe. Her work is held in public and private collections nationally and internationally.

Please join us on the evening of Thursday 21 August 2025, 6-8pm, opening remarks by Anne Hodge, National Gallery of Ireland and Katriona Gillespie, manager of the Custom House Studios + Gallery.
This exhibition is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Mayo County Council.

Tickets: €15(+booking fee) includes glass of wine.

Join Growler, the alchemical 85-year-old Vulva, as she takes you on a ritual theatrical journey like no other within the setting of Luan Gallery’s current exhibition Soft Surge. Described as confronting and adorable all at once, she´ll have you laughing and crying in the same breath. Using storytelling, spoken word, song, and comedy, her mission is to give voice to the voiceless and transmute the shite out of collective intergenerational trauma. Growler leaves no stone unturned and no one left behind.

The State of Her
Created and performed by Dee Mulrooney
Musical accompaniment: Seán Mulrooney and Peter Heffernan

For more details and to book visit https://fareharbor.com/embeds/book/athlonecastle/items/542057/?full-items=yes

This event is kindly supported by the Arts Council

Muine Bheag Arts is excited to welcome visual artist Liliane Puthod and writer Ingrid Lyons. Following an initial pit stop at Muine Bheag Arts as part of tour de force itinerary, Liliane and Ingrid will broadcast a special K7 dans la 4L episode to coincide with COMMUNE. The listening/viewing session will take place at the Railway House, so feel free to sit back and relax along with complimentary tea, coffee and sandwiches while Ingrid and Liliane play cassette tapes live from the car and share anecdotes about their touring adventures. Alongside this public event, a temporary intervention will be visible at the Railway House’s billboard for the duration of the summer programme.

K7 dans la 4L is also a forum for discourse and debate around contemporary art, blurring the boundaries between audience and participant. During a live stream of the journey at the Railway House Bar, we open up a dialogue between tour de force and COMMUNE where K7 dans la 4L acts as a mobile arts club for broadcasting conversations around the contextualisation of contemporary art in rural Ireland. At our respective locations in Belfast vs. Bagenalstown and in the chat room of the gaming app, Twitch.

Tour de force is a national tour of Ireland by visual artist Liliane Puthod and writer Ingrid Lyons. At the wheel of Puthod’s late father’s Renault 4, tour de force is a celebration of culture and creativity in the format of a mapped adventure engaging with artists, musicians, mechanics, farmers, writers, archaeologists, craftspeople, academics and aficionados over a series of pit stops all around Ireland…a summer 2025 ‘buddy movie’. En route, the car becomes a mobile broadcasting unit with K7 dans la 4L which brings you interviews, artist talks and readings as well as cassette tapes played from a Renault Blaupunkt Audio 3000.

Produced by Liliane Puthod and Ingrid Lyons. Core personnel are Rosa Abbott, Public Relations, Gavin Fahy (1815fc) & Eddie Kenrick (City Rocker), Public Engagement. Mary Conlon, Curator and Director of The Dock is invited to respond with a series of texts to follow this nationwide cultural tour of Ireland. tour de force is supported by The Arts Council of Ireland Touring of Work Scheme.

Muine Bheag Arts is pleased to present COMMUNE from 15th – 25th August 2025. Taking place in and around the Muine Bheag Community Centre, the programme unfolds as a collection of live events, workshops and public interventions.

COMMUNE is a site for assembling and disseminating ideas, emerging from a central studio and gathering space shared by artists, community groups, collaborators and graduates-in-residence. COMMUNE can be understood as a series of small collective actions and gestures which reach towards systems of support and connection.

COMMUNE is kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Carlow Arts Office, Creative Ireland Carlow and Bagenalstown Creative Places

For more information and to book click here

Guildhall Taphouse Studios is a new artist studio space in Derry city, set to open later this year. Our aim is to offer affordable workspaces to artists who are seriously engaged in the visual arts. We are a voluntary team of enthusiastic artists who are establishing the studios under the umbrella of Creative Village Arts.

We are hosting an informal, drop-in information session for artists on the 22nd August 2025, from 5-7pm where you can have a look around the studios, ask questions and meet the team.
You can RSVP and sign up for further information through the link below:

https://forms.gle/Lw7JQfaK3bVMxgG1A

Muine Bheag Arts is excited to host Card Club, a relaxed evening of card-playing led by Marian Balfe as part of COMMUNE. Marian will introduce her Sham Solitaire card deck and invite card-playing enthusiasts and non-enthusiasts to play with the unique deck. No card-playing experience required.

More information and booking here:
https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/card-club-marian-balfe-22nd-august-7pm-tickets-1511001017719?aff=oddtdtcreator

Marian Balfe is an artist from the midlands of Ireland. Her practice is wide-ranging and explores how painting, writing, sculpture, and printed ephemera may be used to reflect on place, identity, and value systems in society.

Muine Bheag Arts is pleased to present COMMUNE from 15th – 25th August 2025. Taking place in and around the Muine Bheag Community Centre, the programme unfolds as a collection of live events, workshops and public interventions.

COMMUNE is a site for assembling and disseminating ideas, emerging from a central studio and gathering space shared by artists, community groups, collaborators and graduates-in-residence. COMMUNE can be understood as a series of small collective actions and gestures which reach towards systems of support and connection.

COMMUNE is kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Carlow Arts Office, Creative Ireland Carlow and Bagenalstown Creative Places.

Libraries of Rest by Ciara Barker.

Opening Reception: Saturday 23 August, 2-4pm.

Libraries of Rest by Ciara Barker is an immersive exhibition that invites visitors to imagine the future of restful spaces and practices. Libraries of Rest combines installation, gameplay, sound and light, inhabiting a space between visual art, immersive environment and critical theory, centered on collective well-being.

Barker’s investigation of rest as a method of resistance is informed by a number of critical works, including texts by Tricia Hersey, Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, Sonya Renee Taylor and Dr. Devon Price. This scholarship is grounded in its examination of structural inequality and rest as a racial, disability rights and social justice issue that disproportionately affects marginalised communities.

This exhibition is curated by Aoife Donnellan with a soundscape by Mankyy. Image: Ciara Barker, Libraries of Rest at transmediale studio in Berlin. Image: Ciara Barker, Libraries of Rest at transmediale studio in Berlin. Photo by Katie O’Neill.

An Ciúnas / The Silence.
A solo exhibition by Marianne Keating.

A Sirius Arts Centre National Tour.

Wexford Arts Centre.
Tuesday 26th August – Wednesday 1st October 2025.

Opening Launch: Saturday, 23rd August at 2pm.

Wexford Arts Centre is pleased to present An Ciúnas / The Silence, a solo exhibition by artist Marianne Keating. The exhibition will run in the lower and upper galleries from Tuesday, 26th August, to Wednesday, 1st October, 2025.

Marianne Keating is a London-based Irish artist and researcher whose practice examines intersecting and overlooked narratives of Irish emigration to the Caribbean, particularly Jamaica, where the Irish were recruited as a new labour force after the abolition of enslavement. Keating’s multidisciplinary film installations combine a range of archival materials, found footage, newly shot footage, text, and sound.

An Ciúnas / The Silence traces multiple trajectories of migration from Ireland to both Jamaica and Britain from the period preceding the Great Famine of 1845–52 to the present day. It identifies catalytic moments in the history of the British Empire through the lenses of Ireland and Jamaica to illuminate how events from the past inform current politics and society. The work establishes a radical account of Ireland’s and Jamaica’s fights for self-determination, the social conditions of Ireland in the nineteenth century and today, the evolution of the Jamaican political system, and the power structures at play in both countries before and after independence.

An Ciúnas / The Silence is presented as a multichannel film installation and collages a myriad of moving and still images (often manipulated), either drawn from or referencing public records, online videos and photographs, and newspaper articles. The montage of fragmentary episodes moves back and forth in time and incorporates various creative modes, including textual graphics and audio effects. The overlaying of information, visuals, and sonic outputs amplifies the depicted perspectives, and the work’s presentation as a continuous loop undermines typical storytelling and the notion of a single official, dominant narrative.

An Ciúnas / The Silence was initially presented by The Showroom, London, in 2023-24. The Irish tour of the work is initiated and organised by Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, County Cork, and includes The Model in Sligo, Rua Red in Dublin, Limerick City Gallery of Art, and Wexford Arts Centre. The production of An Ciúnas / The Silence and its Irish tour are supported by The Arts Council.

The presentation of An Ciúnas / The Silence is curated by Miguel Amado, Director of Sirius Arts Centre, and the tour is managed by producer Rayne Booth.

Diagonal Acts by Marie Farrington.

Opening Reception: Saturday 23 August, 2-4pm.

Diagonal Acts refers to how diagonal lines are seen as ways to connect, divide and move across various places or ideas. The exhibition explores themes of memory, place and connection — exploring gaps, fragments and edges within archaeology, geology, sculpture and staged performance.

The material outcomes in Diagonal Acts are supported by a range of collaborations, and connected by a public programme of generative elements devised to critically engage audiences in person and online, enhancing and expanding participation and access.

This exhibition is curated by Kate Strain with contributions by Liliane Puthod and Laura Ní Fhlaibhín. Image: Marie Farrington, Figures for Lifting, 2024, carved soapstone. Photo by Rein Kooyman.

Clare Langan, The Heart of a Tree, 2020.

HD digital film, 12 mins.

Saturday 23 August from 10.00am to 3.30pm.

This film contemplates the centrality of these giants of nature to the planet’s survival, and ours. Trees provide us with the very air we breathe. It is a glimpse into a future world where human beings have evolved and adapted in order to survive. Pandemics such as coronavirus are the result of humanity’s destruction of nature, according to leaders at the UN, WHO and WWF International, and the world has been ignoring this stark reality for decades.

The Heart of a Tree is a timely metaphor of a world turned upside down by our disregard for nature and the planet. It  is shot in a barren treeless landscape, which could either be a future vision of earth or another planet. The inhabitants negotiate their way though this inhospitable environment, harvesting air, the new gold. They plant trees on a deserted black beach, hoping to repopulate the planet with its source of oxygen.

Langan’s film is a glimpse into a future world where human beings have evolved and adapted in order to survive, exploring the disconnection between humankind and nature and ultimately within us.

Clare Langan (Dublin, 1967) is a significant Irish artist working within an international context. Her filmic work is often made in inhospitable locations and has been shown across the world, including at MoMA, Lyon Biennale, and Liverpool Biennial. She studied Fine Art at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin and with a Fulbright Scholarship, completed a film course at NYU. In 2017 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from The National University of Ireland and in 2019 she became a member of Aosdána

Muine Bheag Arts is pleased to welcome graduates-in-residence Ciara Davitt, Nina Fitzgerald Graham and Mica Moroney. The artists will host a presentation of their work following their residency as part of the COMMUNE programme.

More information and booking here: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/presentation-graduates-in-residence-23rd-august-5pm-tickets-1511008209229?aff=oddtdtcreator

Ciara Davitt is a multi-disciplinary artist based between Kildare and Dublin. She aims to create cycles of taking, giving and sharing through her work. Her graduate work, “did you know gold comes from the stars” emerges from research on the socio-political conditions of extraction and land. Speaking to the heavy contrasts present between the timescales of the landscape and human productivity, harsh and soft materials, and fast and slow processes, are used.

Acidity of the soil, field recordings, casts of her Dad’s fingers and reclaimed metal are some of the things implemented-drawing out a conversation around rupture, time, wealth distribution and social impact.

Nina Fitzgerald Graham is a multi-disciplinary artist recently graduated from Sculpture and Expanded Practice in NCAD. Her practice is firmly rooted in Dublin’s North Inner City, exploring community formation and alienation, and our sensitivities to the stranger – human and non-human.

She employs a multisensory approach in art-making, to create embodied experience of these seemingly intangible issues. She has an experimental approach to material and medium, working across sculpture, interactive installation and performance art, as well as food-art as a form of interactive sculpture and socially engaged practice. Her work has been presented at a variety of interdisciplinary showcases, such as Alternating Currents at the Complex, EVA International Biennial and OpenEar Festival. Her work is socially and environmentally engaged, produced in tandem with her activities as a community organiser, and DIY/grassroots collaborator.

Mica Moroney is an artist from Dublin and a recent graduate of Sculpture at NCAD. Working across photography, video, sculpture, and installation, her practice explores the intersection of the poetic and the political. She is interested in the physical traces left by time, neglect, and regeneration, and how these processes mirror broader social and environmental tensions. Drawing from nature, urban environments and the urgency of our political moment, she feels a responsibility as an artist to reflect these concerns in her work.

Muine Bheag Arts is pleased to present COMMUNE from 15th – 25th August 2025. Taking place in and around the Muine Bheag Community Centre, the programme unfolds as a collection of live events, workshops and public interventions.

COMMUNE is a site for assembling and disseminating ideas, emerging from a central studio and gathering space shared by artists, community groups, collaborators and graduates-in-residence. COMMUNE can be understood as a series of small collective actions and gestures which reach towards systems of support and connection.

COMMUNE is kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Carlow Arts Office, Creative Ireland Carlow and Bagenalstown Creative Places

We are delighted to support Bishop Street Artists with this exhibition which will continue until August 15th.

Nine artists working within the beautiful Derry Walls will share their work.

Amanda Walker – Patsy Brennan – Catherine Ellis – Brian Farrell – Peter Davidson – Karl Porter – Kevin Horgan – Anneliese Gregg – Tearlach Rose.

Curated by Sinéad Smyth, Associate Artist at Echo Echo Dance Theatre.

You are invited to join us for the opening of this beautiful exhibition happening in Echo Echo, on the Walls of Derry City, on Friday, April 25th at 7pm.

Enjoy city related art from each artist in their own unique and personal style.

Event Image: Amanda Walker

You’re invited to the launch of HORIZON, a new exhibition featuring audiovisual works by Lucy Tevlin and Ben Malcolmson at FLAX Project Space, Belfast.

Launch Event:
Thursday, 7th August | 18:00–21:00
(Part of Late Night Art Belfast)
belfastartmap.com/latenightart

Exhibition Dates:
8th–15th August | 12:00–16:00
Lucy & Ben will be on site throughout the show’s duration. Ben will be hosting an open studio within Flax.

Location:
FLAX Project Space
Level 3, 7 North Street
Belfast, BT1 1NA

LO-TEK is a 16mm film made during Tevlin’s residency with Harkat Studios, India (2024). Hand-developed and DIY contact-printed, the film engages in the language of experimental filmmaking processes and is material-focused. LO-TEK captures Kalimpong’s Himalayan region, where homes cling to slopes. The relationship between technology and the landscape is ever present, bringing into question historical Western ideas of progress and the mythology of technology. Malcolmson’s Untitled Soundscape #1 (2025) responds to Tevlin’s film. An open studio presents his studio work (2020–25), including sketchbooks, past exhibits, and future projects.

Lucy Tevlin is a visual artist based in Dublin. Her practice is defined by a conceptual approach to image-making. She uses image, text, film, and found materials to interrogate the spatial, mechanical, and historical properties of the photographic image. Her work explores concerns such as the materiality of the photographic apparatus and the dichotomies of truth versus fiction and public versus private.

Ben Malcolmson is a visual artist & curator from Belfast and based in Dublin. His fine art practice explores the parameters of photography, video and sculpture using alternative photographic processes with relation to one’s land and identity. His curatorial interests encompass social engagement and activism through a public-centred approach, particularly for young people.

If you have any access requirements, please do get in touch and we will accommodate as much as possible. FLAX Project Space is not wheelchair accessible. For further details, visit https://flaxartstudios.org/.

Vertigo 67th celebrates the anniversary of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and the collaboration between Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann for their masterpiece with a three-day international film conference that will focus exclusively on all aspects of what makes this movie a masterpiece in cinema. Vertigo67 festival kicks off with a special 4k screening of the 1958 classic film Vertigo starring James Stewart and Kim Novak in the Lighthouse Cinema in Dublin on Tuesday 12 August at 8pm, with a free introductory talk before the movie screening given by Elizabeth
Bullock (San Francisco).

After the evening screening of the movie at the Lighthouse on Tuesday 12 August, the Vertigo67 festival continues over in the Trinity Long Room Hub venue, Trinity College Dublin from Wednesday 13 August to Friday 15 August. The festival events at Trinity College run over three days with presentations, talks, interviews and panel discussions from 20 international scholars, writers, conductors and artists from across the globe: US, UK, Hong Kong, Ireland and Switzerland.

Conference session tickets: €10 cash only (Tickets at door Trinity Long Room Hub)

Muine Bheag Arts is delighted to launch new publication Beacon by Niamh Seana Meehan. Join us to celebrate the start of the COMMUNE programme with readings from Niamh Seana Meehan and Lucie McLaughlin.

Beacon is a travelogue which traces Niamh Seana Meehan’s explorations around the coast of Ireland with her dog, Olive. A collection of meditations, sketches, and photographs offer Meehan’s reflections on being in transit and record intimate conversations with the landscape.
~
Niamh Seana Meehan is an artist working across sound, sculpture, installation, and text. Her practice explores floating as a methodological approach to nurturing our relationship with water and the wider environment. Through acts of sense-making, wayfinding, and deep listening, she invites immersive experiences that explore our entanglements with more-than-human worlds. Her work has been exhibited at The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; An Táin Arts Centre, Dundalk; and Art Arcadia, Derry.

Lucie McLaughlin is an artist, writer, researcher and facilitator. Her practice focuses on expanded forms of writing, realised in publications, sound and performance readings. Her work has recently been published by Paper Visual Art, JOAN, Mirror Lamp Press, The Yellow Paper and Catalyst Arts Belfast. Her current research is based at the Centre for Contemporary Art Derry~Londonderry where she is undertaking a collaborative PhD project with Kingston School of Art.

Muine Bheag Arts is pleased to present COMMUNE from 15th – 25th August 2025. Taking place in and around the Muine Bheag Community Centre, the programme unfolds as a collection of live events, workshops and public interventions.

COMMUNE is a site for assembling and disseminating ideas, emerging from a central studio and gathering space shared by artists, community groups, collaborators and graduates-in-residence. COMMUNE can be understood as a series of small collective actions and gestures which reach towards systems of support and connection.

COMMUNE is kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Carlow Arts Office, Creative Ireland Carlow and Bagenalstown Creative Places

Join exhibiting artist Emily Waszak in conversation with curator Sara Greavu. The talk includes a short introduction and conversation about Emily Waszak’s work which is on view as part of the group exhibition ‘Faigh Amach’, 01 August – 21 September 2025.

Emily Waszak, along with Ella Bertilsson and Kathy Tynan, was selected through an open call to take part in the group exhibition ‘Faigh Amach’ (Irish, roughly translated as ‘discover’). The exhibition is a new initiative by Temple Bar Gallery + Studios in partnership with Culture Ireland and Southwark Park Galleries (SPG), London, to support an artist in presenting their first solo exhibition outside Ireland. One of the three exhibiting artists will be invited to present their first international solo exhibition at SPG Lake Gallery in Spring 2026.

Emily Waszak’s textile and assemblage works are informed by rituals of her Japanese cultural heritage, experiences of grief and the landscape of her home in Ireland. Using both ancient and contemporary weaving techniques, alongside the collection and display of found materials and other hand-made objects, Waszak combines processes that transcend time and place to find meaning in loss and understand how to access otherworldliness. Born in North Carolina, United States, Emily Waszak works between Dublin and Donegal. Recent solo exhibitions include Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny (2025); Pallas Projects, Dublin (2024); TU Dublin (2023).

Sara Greavu is a curator, independent researcher, writer and organiser, and is the Director of Fire Station Artists’ Studios. Previously she was Curator of Visual Arts at Project Arts Centre and the curator, with Project, of the Irish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2024) with the artist Eimear Walshe. Independent projects include Open the book at a different page, a research exhibition produced with artist Ciara Phillips and former members of the Derry Film and Video Workshop, which dealt with intertwined political and cultural initiatives in Derry in the 1980s.

Event location Information: This event takes place in a ground-floor, street-facing Gallery. The space contains free standing installations, sculptures and wall-hung paintings. For further accessibility information please contact Learning + Public Engagement Curator Órla Goodwin.

Exhibition continues 17th April – 16th August 2025.

Waterford Gallery of Art are delighted to present a new solo exhibition of retrospective paintings from 2010 – 2025 by Dungarvan based award winning artist, Catherine Barron. Salvaged metal plates, vintage 78rpm records, book covers, and playing cards serve as the artists canvas to reveal a deeply personal, as well as allegorical, biographical journey.

“The power of the imagination does not lie in its ability to invent, but to see more deeply, what is. And what is, is so awesome, you couldn’t make it up! “

Catherine Barron was born in Co. Carlow, lives and works in Dungarvan co. Waterford since 2017, and is represented by the Molesworth Gallery.

Every Saturday
7 Jun. – 16. Aug. 2025, 11 am
€15 pp

Learn all about the art and life of Jack B. Yeats in this 45-minute guided tour of the exhibition The Dreaming Road. Led by an expert curator, the tour explores Yeats’ life, his love of Sligo and how it is reflected in all of his art. Enjoy private time in the gallery for an intimate, focused viewing experience while gaining deeper insight into one of Ireland’s most iconic painters. Perfect for art enthusiasts, curious visitors, and anyone looking to connect with Yeats’ unique artistic legacy.

For larger groups (10 or more) please contact info@themodel.ie before booking.

You can view a video with further information on Instagram HERE

Event is FREE to attend but booking is advised due to limited space – book here: https://libcal.ucc.ie/event/4388342

Join us for an insightful half-day seminar exploring how contemporary artists engage with archives in their creative practice. Through artist presentations and a panel discussion, we will examine the dynamic ways artists are reimagining archival material, drawing from personal, public, and institutional collections.

This event will also highlight collaborative projects between artist Elize de Beer and artist/archivist Barbra Diener who are exploring the Liam Kennedy Collection housed at the UCC Special Collections Library. They will speak to how such partnerships can unlock new narratives and expand the boundaries of both artistic and archival work.
Whether you are an artist, researcher, student, or art enthusiast, this seminar offers a unique opportunity to hear from artists and archivists working at the intersection of memory, heritage, and contemporary art.
This seminar has been funded and supported by UCC Special Collections Library as well as Sample-Studios through the Studios of Sanctuary Programme funded by Rethink Ireland Resilient Cork Fund and Community Foundation Ireland.

Opening reception: Saturday, the 21st of June, 12 to 2pm.

“There is something musical in how Helen Blake’s work unfolds over time. This is true of the artist’s process; it is also true for the viewer. The longer you spend with Blake’s work, the more it yields. Blake paints meticulously, in oils, on an increasingly small scale in recent years, using canvases at times no larger than an average paperback. At first impression, these works convey a bright, orderly abstraction, composed of diamonds, lozenges, triangles, and jagged serrations, interlocked with a grid-like rectilinear formality. However, upon closer inspection, these repeated shapes and geometric impressions are not so streamlined or symmetrical as they appear; they are not the product of careful planning but the result of gradually accreted layers of colour, one laid one on top of the other, affecting one another without intermingling.”

Dr. Nathan O’Donnell
From ‘Recent Works’ Molesworth Gallery, March 2017

Helen Blake is a painter whose practice focuses on colour; engaging with rhythm and formalism, chance and deliberation.

Using a working method where process and contemplation guide the evolution of the work, she constructs overtly hand-made paintings which record and examine colour conversations within accumulating pattern structures, embracing accidents, flaws and discrepancies within their rhythms.

Starting from an imprecise grid structure, and rejecting the use of pre-drawn lines or tape, she build up layers of simple hand-painted lines and geometric shapes – square, triangle, rectangle, chevron – to create intricate surfaces where colour fragments can interact, sing together, harmonise, and sometimes jar.

Blake grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and graduated with an honours degree in Visual Art from Aberystwyth University, Wales. She lives and works in County Wicklow, Ireland. She was runner-up for the Contemporary British Painting Prize 2022.

Other awards include the Arts Council of Ireland Visual Arts Bursary Award; The Model Cara Award, Sligo; County Wicklow Visual Arts Open, Overall Winner, Mermaid Art Centre, Bray, adjudicated by Patrick T Murphy, Director, RHA. Eleven solo exhibitions to date include Molesworth Gallery, Dublin; Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast; Limerick Museum; Mermaid Art Centre, Bray; FUTURES14, RHA, Dublin.

Her paintings been shown in numerous exhibitions both nationally and internationally, including in the RHA Dublin and RA London Annual Exhibitions. She is represented by Molesworth Gallery, Dublin and Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast.

The Cash Shop is a curatorial project by artist Jim Ricks and is a community-engaged contemporary visual arts hub in South County Galway.

Exhibition continues 14 June – 16 August 2025.

These Magnetic Magnitudes
Cecilia Danell
Curated by Brenda McParland

These Magnetic Magnitudes is a solo exhibition of new and recent paintings, textiles, ceramics and film by Cecilia Danell, curated by Brenda McParland. The exhibition explores the overarching theme of contemporary landscapes and our unfulfilled yearning for that which is primal and unspoilt, filtered through the lens of psychogeography, Science Fiction and the sublime. In a practice which is rooted in materiality and process, the starting point for Danell’s work is a first-hand engagement with the landscape of the area in Sweden where she grew up. Bodily memories of moving through the places she depicts are mirrored in the physical endeavour of painting on a large scale, which creates its own spatial choreography. The landscapes Danell depicts are real places that she has encountered and photographed. However rather than offering a documentary view of these places, she uses fiction and the imaginary to speak about present and possible futures through a Science Fiction reading of the landscape. A new series of large paintings considers ideas around spectatorship and participation, inspired by the large nature dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. We are presented with scenes that invite the viewer to step into them, yet the 2D surfaces of her paintings prevent us. Danell continuously points back to this push and pull between realism, abstraction and the materiality of paint itself. She uses oil and acrylic on canvas in vivid shades of greens, purples and pinks, using acrylic washes and layers beneath the oil paint, and acrylic for drips because of its viscosity and velocity.

Danell is predominantly a painter, but also makes textile tapestries, ceramic and fabric sculptures and occasionally films. Danell recalls idyllic summer childhood memories of the Swedish countryside in her oversized fabric sculpture Lupin, 2024 which is both beautiful and treacherous as lupins are listed as an invasive species in Sweden, that should be eradicated when found in the wild. A series of ceramic sculptures in pastel shades and three large colourful appliqúe tapestries memorialise snow for future generations by playing with its properties of hiding and abstracting the underlying shapes. Echoing the snowy vistas in The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin, these are imaginary “ur-forms” that touch upon the primeval, merging colourful playfulness with a solemn reminder of climate change and the state of our planet. In the same room, the film Snow Day, 2025 (15 mins) camera/editing by Danell; soundtrack by Keith Wallace/Loner Deluxe captures a first-person view of the artist moving through the snowy woods in Sweden which is both immersive and atmospheric.

A hardback catalogue with texts by Aidan Dunne and Charity Coleman will be published by Solstice Arts Centre and Kevin Kavanagh in autumn 2025.

The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday 11am – 4pm.

Exhibition continues 2 – 16 August 2025.

The ever changing light on the water, gentle tides on hot days, boulders older than time become like sleeping figures nestling on the glass turquoise sea, seaweed hair, dream like with rocks for shoes. These observations have informed Rosie McGurran’s new suite of works. With nods to the writings of Tim Robinson and Ithell Colqhuon, Mc Gurran embraces what Colqhoun describes during her time in Roundstone in the 1950s as ‘suaimhness’ the Gealic word that expresses luxuriating in quiet. This exhibition presents works based on daily drawings, often returning to the same places to examine and explore the gentle and fragile environment of Connemara.

Opening reception Saturday August 2nd @6PM
Guided tour and artist’s talk, Sunday August 10th @1PM
Daily painting demonstrations, @2PM
Open 11AM-6PM until August 16th

Exhibition continues 19 July – 16 August 2025.

Fragments is a two person show by artists Lorraine Lawlor and Melissa Corish. These artists explore themes of lost stories and memory, preserving fragments of time that hold a poetic and factual resonance.

Tuesday to Sunday 10.15am – 5.30pm until August 16th

Celebrating the adoption of the publication Stone Mad by Seamus Murphy for Cork’s One City One Book, Seamus Murphy’s legacy as stone carver and sculptor is seen as vibrant and alive, in the quality of those who continue in the medium.

As part of the events of Heritage Week in a presentation by National Sculpture Factory and Cork City Libraries, sculptor Michael Quane will talk about his work and his field as a stone carver whose work is currently exhibited nationally and internationally. This is a free event but as space is limited booking is necessary.

Michael Quane is a Cork-born contemporary sculptor who studied science at UCC before attending the Crawford College of Art. His work explores relationships between animals and people that are dynamic and fluid, often combining strength and humour.  His medium is stone carving, in limestone and marble. Michael has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally, as well as several large-scale publicly sited sculptures such as Horses and Riders at the Mallow roundabout, the very unusual sculpted plant at Botanic Gardens, Dublin and the Tomás O’Criomthain work at the Blasket Island Heritage Centre.

Cork Heritage Day is a wonderful celebration of Cork’s built heritage. In its 20th year, Cork Heritage Open Day provides the exciting opportunity to meet some artists, & see where they work within this unique artists’ workplace.
National Sculpture Factory was set up 36 years ago & is a thriving artists’ resource for many creative projects. An important facility locally, nationally & internationally, NSF is primarily Arts Council funded, supported by Cork City Council.
You are invited to visit NSF facilities and artists in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere and learn more about the creative process directly from the source. Join us on Saturday 16th August from 12 – 4 pm to meet the artists, discover where they work and find out more about their practice.
Guided tours will take place every hour starting at 12pm through 3pm (last tour 3pm). No booking necessary. For Health & Safety reasons, under 16’s must be accompanied by an adult.

Proudly sponsored by Mill Cove Gallery. This year’s Kenmare Arts Festival invites you to pause, explore, and reconnect through art in all its forms. Running from 3–17 August, the festival transforms Kenmare into a living gallery, fills the Carnegie Theatre, and invites everyone to take part. With exhibitions, performances, poetry events, literary launches, and hands -on workshops, this two-week celebration reflects the vibrant spirit of artistic collaboration and community. Whether you’re a local resident or a visitor, Kenmare warmly welcomes you to be inspired and enjoy a truly memorable experience. John Goode Festival Director

Kilkenny Celebrates 10 Years of Creative Community at AKA 2025
This August, the streets, galleries, and green spaces of Kilkenny will once again pulse with creativity as the Alternative Kilkenny Arts (AKA) Fringe Festival celebrates ten years of community-led, volunteer-powered artistic expression.
Running from 7–17 August, the 2025 programme features an impressive line-up of over 120 events, showcasing the talents of visual artists, performers, writers, musicians, makers, and creative collectives from across Kilkenny city and county.
This year’s highlights include a special outdoor screening of animated short films scored live by the Irish Composers’ Collective in collaboration with Cartoon Saloon, a retrospective talk on cultural figure Peter Brennan, and a landmark Emerging Artists Exhibition featuring ten rising talents at 1st floor, The Bank, Rose Inn Street, R95 Y672.
AKA remains a proud celebration of Kilkenny’s independent arts scene, placing accessibility and community engagement at its core. With events spanning theatre, craft, literature, film, music, workshops, and more, this year’s festival offers something to inspire every audience.
AKA invites locals and visitors alike to immerse themselves in ten unforgettable days of artistic exploration, connection, and celebration.
The full programme will be available on www.akafringe.com for the 18th July.

Exhibition continues 7 August – 17 August 2025.

Dublin artist Linda Proudfoot and Latvian artist Dana Sorokina have come together for a two person exhibition during the AKA Fringe Festival in Kilkenny.
Linda will exhibit a selection of her landscapes and seascapes, while Dana will present some of her vibrant flower compositions and her images of VW Classic Beetles.

Exhibition open 10am – 5pm Mon – Sat, and 12-5pm Sunday.
Curated by Tony Strickland

Through her unique interpretation of batik techniques, Trini Kenny pushes the medium beyond craft into the realm of fine art, making her work recognisable and deeply evocative. Visit her inspirational exhibition and open studio during the Kilkenny Arts Festival in the beautiful gardens of Lavistown House and step into the world batik and wax resist painting.

The Bedding Planes

There is solace in beauty and it nourishes the soul.
‘The Bedding Planes’ documents a moment in time, perhaps with tiny traces on a well worn path. Beauty is at its heart.

In geological terms a bedding plane is a surface representing contact between a deposit and a depositing medium such as water and atmosphere during a time of change and this is reflected in a difference in texture or composition, with a bedding plane representing the visible line of change. This bedding plane however takes a more nuanced form and includes works made from layers of colour, paper and clay. The pop up Gallery lies at the bottom of a long narrow ‘natural’ garden that is a haven for wildlife and biodiversity. As the viewer navigates their way to the room along a winding path through birdsong and dappled light from the surrounding trees the journey itself becomes a contemplative experience and the boundary between art and nature disappears.

The Bedding Planes is curated by Helena Gorey and shows her works on paper alongside forms and vessels in clay by Rob Pearson and Peter Scroope and introduces Roise O’Shea.

Open daily from 2.00pm to 6.00pm from the 10th to 17th August 2025.
Pop Up Gallery during Kilkenny Arts Festival, Burnchurch R95 Y0C8

SerformanceP 2025 – International Performance Art Exhibition in São Paulo. with performance BURNING 15 AUG · PAÇO MUNICIPAL
Attention, performers and allies of living art: we begin the publications of the selected works of the 9th PerformanceP – International Art Performance Show in São Paulo!

Cards from participating artists will begin to appear on our networks and also in the gallery of NFTs from the show (link in bio).

We open with the work of @noelmolloy61, Ireland, who present us a memorial performance about an episode from 1921: the Roscommon community fire, carried out in retaliation by local security forces. The action, arbitrary and violent, echoes what so often happens in Brazilian favelas and suburbs to this day — where entire communities pay for isolated acts.

If at the arrival of the Europeans in 1500, they came from the Middle Ages and we came from the polished stone, today they say we are in the 19th century while the Global North already breathes the 21st century. We continue to burn communities — literally or symbolically.

The Christmas play is similar to commemorating the massacre of Candelaria or Vicar General, after 100 years without incident… it happens that every year we have “fires” in communities; but the numbers indicate improvement, thank God.

Celebrating this event, as the work suggests, is also a gesture of consciousness: what was done to prevent it from repeating there? What’s missing so we can do the same here?

The direction of the show and curation are done by @ismaeltrabuco, artist and master’s in performance and education, idealizer of PerformanceP since 2015, in partnership with @isaactrabuco, corporate and academic, communication specialist, communities and territories. Together, we lead this edition listening to the streets, the sidelines and the most urgent and emerging subjects.

Like collective dreams, video games and virtual worlds are the digital fairytales of the 21st century, both shallow and deep, they are bottomless in their potential for adventure.

Drop by Triskel Arts Centre for an afternoon event showcasing the digital worlds and stories of indie video games and other electric realities created by local artists and developers.

All ages are welcome to drop in and see the virtual worlds on display.
Indie game devs and other virtual world makers are welcome to bring a laptop and show off what they are working on.
If you hope to showcase a project or have questions, please contact the event organiser Daniel Murray at daniel@loom.cafe

Sun 17 Aug 2025 – 13:00

Exhibition continues 24 July – 17 August 2025.

Custom House Studios + Gallery cordially invites you to the official opening reception for Caught in Blue a solo exhibition by Sarah Wren Wilson. Please join us on the evening of Thursday 24th July 2025, 6-8pm, opening remarks by the artist.

This exhibition invites the viewer into a liminal space—a deep blue space within another space. Blue, with its associations of depth, vastness, and the unknown, creates an atmosphere of openness and quiet immersion.

By entering, the viewer becomes more than a passive observer; they become part of the artwork. This immersive encounter opens a dialogue between the inner and outer worlds, between what is seen and what is felt.

The paintings explore the relationship between the psyche and the external environment, reflecting how perception shapes our understanding of reality. Often, the outer world mirrors our internal landscape. A recurring motif—the net—serves as both container and filter: a web of memory, emotion, and subconscious patterns. It maps the inner world, and in doing so, transforms our perception of the outer one.

Image: Sarah Wren Wilson ‘Overtly Held’- Acrylic Ink on Canvas, 80x60cm, 2025

The Custom House Studios + Gallery cordially invites you to the official opening reception for InHouse ’25, a Custom House Studio Artist’s Group Exhibition. Please join us on the Evening of Thursday 24th July 2025, 6-8pm. Opening remarks by Chairperson Simon Wall.

Exhibiting Artists: Emma Bourke | Tom Brawn | Breda Burns | Mags Duffy | Ralph Gelbert | Pauline Garavan | Genevieve King | Christine Prescott | Betsy Stirratt | Ian Wieczorek | Sarah Wren Wilson |

Image: Floodways, Gouache on Paper, 2025, Betsy Stirratt

Proudly sponsored by Mill Cove Gallery.
This year’s Kenmare Arts Festival invites you to pause, explore, and reconnect through art in all its forms. Running from 3–17 August, the festival transforms Kenmare into a living gallery, fills the Carnegie Theatre, and invites everyone to take part.
With exhibitions, performances, poetry events, literary launches, and hands-on workshops, this two-week celebration reflects the vibrant spirit of artistic collaboration and community. Whether you’re a local resident or a visitor, Kenmare warmly welcomes you to be inspired and enjoy a truly memorable experience.
John Goode
Festival Director

Muine Bheag Arts is thrilled to welcome artist Lily O’Shea as part of COMMUNE. Lily will present a new body of work, a framework for me and you, which responds to conditions of precarity within the context of the housing crisis and points towards alternative ways of looking at space and home.

Lily will lead a tour of her public sculpture series, along with a reading by Ali O’Shea who has written a text in response to the work. This will be followed by an open discussion with members of CATU.

More information and booking here: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/tour-with-artist-lily-oshea-discussion-with-catu-17th-august-2pm-tickets-1510992672759?aff=oddtdtcreator

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Lily O’Shea is a visual artist based in Cork, working across sculpture, drawing, and writing. Through woodwork, she creates quasi-sculptural forms that develop into immersive installations, integrating technical drawings and reflective texts. Lily’s research-based practice explores different methods of survival in a fluctuating ideological structure, while emphasizing the need to reclaim and redefine our relationship with time.

In 2025, Lily was awarded the Evolve Practice Award by Fire Station Artists’ Studios, where she completed a three-month residency. Recent work has featured in Bless The Corners of This House (Bloomers, Cork, 2025), The Collision Project (screen service, Dublin, 2024), and CCA Introducing (Centre for Contemporary Art, Derry, 2024). Lily is a recent recipient of the Visual Arts Bursary and Agility Award (2024), and was previously supported by the Creative Practitioner Bursary from Galway City Council in 2023.

Community Action Tenants Union (CATU) is a membership-based Union for Communities & Tenants in Ireland with active branches across the country. CATU was founded in Dublin in 2019 by a few dozen tenants, to help share resources and skills to empower themselves and their neighbours facing eviction, homelessness and housing precarity.

COMMUNE is kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Carlow Arts Office, Creative Ireland Carlow and Bagenalstown Creative Places

Sunday 17th August 2025 – 2pm

Bog Bothy is a touring collection of new work, built outcomes, and ambitious proposals toward a new peatlands architecture, presented by the Irish Architecture Foundation and 12th Field.

Bog Bothy is touring to Girley Bog, Co. Meath on 16-17 August during National Heritage Week, following a successful run in Clara.

Bog Bothy includes a new Bothy shelter, an exhibition of photographs by Shane Hynan and drawings by 12th Field, work by artist in residence Luke Casserly, and a public programme of workshops, tours and performances on our evolving relationship with Ireland’s peatlands through the lens of architecture and placemaking.

The bothy structure has been co-created with communities in Offaly, Louth and Meath and designed by architects Evelyn D’Arcy and David Jameson of 12th Field.

All events are free but must be booked in advance.

Saturday 16 August:
11:00 – 11:30 Bog Bothy Launch and Tea Ceremony
11:30 – 12:30 Guided Bothy Tour with 12th Field
13:30 – 15:00 Novel Ecologies Workshop with Fiona Nulty and Helen Flanagan
15:15 – 17:00 What A Bog Remembers – Workshop with Luke Casserly
17:30 – 19:00 An Evening with Friends of Ardee Bog

Sunday 17 August:
7:00 – 8:30 Moth Trapping Workshop
11:00 – 12:30 Bog Bothy Tour with 12th Field
13:00-15:00 Bog Lab and Zine Workshop with Elena Aitova & Kate Flood

1pm Tuesday 19 August 2025.
In-person at Civic Trust House, 50 Pope’s Quay, Cork, T23 R6XC.

Spotlight on a national treasure!

Members of the public are invited to attend our in-person talk during Heritage Week that will focus on the conservation of a true national treasure.

The Goose Girl (1888) is a much loved oil painting by Edith Somerville in the collection of Crawford Art Gallery.

The Goose Girl is now the subject of conservation treatment while the doors of Crawford Art Gallery are closed for its major redevelopment. Supported by the Heritage Council through the Heritage Stewardship Fund 2025, this crucial work will ensure the historic painting’s future.

This public talk will shed new light on the painting, exploring its history and the steps being taken to care for it in Crawford Art Gallery’s new mobile conservation laboratory. This talk will feature three speakers: conservator Chiara Chillè, registrar Jean O’Donovan, and curator Michael Waldron.

This initiative underscores Crawford Art Gallery’s commitment to best-practice heritage care, adhering to a principle of minimal intervention—carrying out only those treatments necessary to stabilise and preserve the original condition of an artwork.

Discover how ancient burning practices, wild plants, and disappearing traditions still shape our cultural landscape.

Join us with artist-in-residence Shane Finan for a public talk on his fascinating work with FIRECULT, (https://jpi-climate.eu/project/firecult/) an international project exploring how wildfire impacts cultural heritage. Shane delves into Irish upland traditions—particularly the historic burning of aiteann (furze/gorse)—and how fire was once both a tool and a symbol in rural life. From folklore to flora, he transforms aiteann and sitka spruce into drawing charcoal to tell a story of loss, resilience, and renewal.

Wildfire is a natural earth system process in close interactive relationship with human activity since prehistoric times, that has shaped cultural landscapes and defined ways of life. Humans use fire to modify their landscape, clear land for agriculture and development and replenish soil nutrients.

At the same time, fire’s destructive power endangers livelihoods and landscapes. Anthropogenic climate change disrupts the fine balance between wildfire and humans, directly through its influence on the natural environment and indirectly by impacting on societal structures and behaviours, threatening tangible and intangible cultural heritage. To this day, there is little understanding on the role of wildfire in damaging or creating cultural heritage.

Join Shreya Shah for the opening of her first solo show on 20th August, 6pm at Gallery X, Dublin.
No booking required, there will be some Indian snacks and drinks.

Artist Bio: Shreya Shah is an Indian artist, originally from the west of India (Gujarat). She moved to Ireland 8 years ago and studied part-time at NCAD. The Indian education system shaped her to pursue engineering, but it never resonated with her being. She always painted to feed her soul and recently quit her corporate tech job to follow her heart.

Irish and Indian ancient spiritual practices inspire Shreya’s work, with fire being a central theme of her solo show. Through this body of work, Shreya is connecting to her ‘Inner Fire’ and inviting the viewers to interact with the works and further tend to their inner fire.

Shreya’s multi-disciplinary arts practice includes paintings, installations and socially engaged ceremonies/meditations. As part of this solo exhibition, there will be a fire ceremony with Kali dance in a forest near Dublin, and some meditations and women’s circles inside the gallery space. Both events are free. If you are interested in attending them, send an email to her shreyashah950@gmail.com or follow her on Instagram – https://instagram.com/surrealistshreya

1pm Wednesday 20 August 2025
Online via Zoom

Spotlight on a national treasure!

Members of the public are invited to attend an online talk during Heritage Week that will focus on the conservation of a true national treasure.

The Goose Girl (1888) is a much loved oil painting by Edith Somerville in the collection of Crawford Art Gallery.

The Goose Girl is now the subject of conservation treatment while the doors of Crawford Art Gallery are closed for its major redevelopment. Supported by the Heritage Council through the Heritage Stewardship Fund 2025, this crucial work will ensure the historic painting’s future.

This public talk will shed new light on the painting, exploring its history and the steps being taken to care for it in Crawford Art Gallery’s new mobile conservation laboratory. This talk will feature three speakers: conservator Chiara Chillè, registrar Jean O’Donovan, and curator Michael Waldron.

This initiative underscores Crawford Art Gallery’s commitment to best-practice heritage care, adhering to a principle of minimal intervention—carrying out only those treatments necessary to stabilise and preserve the original condition of an artwork.

PRICE: €150.

VENUE: CREATIVE ZONE, BOOLE LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK

TIMES: MONDAY – THURSDAY, 18-21 AUGUST.

TALKS: 10:30AM-12:30PM.

OPTIONAL SITE VISIT: 1:30-2:30PM.

DAY 1, MONDAY 18 AUG: MONASTIC IRELAND:

In this introduction to the summer school, we briefly discuss the role that visual culture plays in our understanding of history. This will be followed by an in-depth talk on the history of Monastic Ireland, examining the visual forms associated with sites such as the Abbey of Kells, exploring how trade and conquest during the Viking raids produced patterns of visual exchange with areas such as Iona. We will interpret the visual forms of The Book of Kells to understand how faith and aesthetics intertwined, and we will also explore the development of a native symbolic mythology through the famous yet mysterious Sheela na Gig sculptures.

Afternoon Site Visit: Cork Public Museum

DAY 2, TUESDAY 19 AUG: IRELAND IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT:

We delve into the most prosperous period for Irish Art since the monastic period, turning our attention to the Age of Enlightenment in the long nineteenth century. This saw a dramatic surge in the development of visual art and literature throughout Europe. This was equally true in Ireland; still a part of the British Empire, Irish artists nonetheless drew on the prevailing Neoclassicism and Romanticism to create a distinctly Irish identity. We will discuss artists including John Hogan and Daniel Maclise, also exploring the impact that classical sculpture and broader European visual developments had through the development of the Cork School of Art and the local collection.

Afternoon Site Visit: St Finbarr’s Cathedral

DAY 3, WEDNESDAY 20 AUGUST: IRISH MODERNISM:

Modernity brought about an increasingly integrated and globalised world through industrial and technological developments. Alongside these developments, visual artists strove to develop new ways in which a radically shifting world could be visualised. With these new phenomena in mind, we will explore how artists in Ireland developed a distinctly Irish modernism, both through travel and cultural exchange with our ever-more accessible European neighbours, and in response to the specific issues that faced Irish identity at the turn of the twentieth century.

Afternoon Site Visit: The Honan Chapel

DAY 4, THURSDAY 21 AUGUST: CONTEMPORARY ART IN IRELAND:

We finish our journey through the history of Irish art by turning our attention to the here and now. In the present day, Irish artists are beset with the question that faces artists the world over – what does it feel like to be alive today? In the twenty-first century, this means a melting pot of cultures, media, visual forms, and meanings. Contemporary Irish art represents this diversity – in today’s lecture, we survey some of the most prominent Irish contemporary artists, exploring how their practice advances both visual culture and the most pressing issues that face us in the present climate. Today’s lecture will include an artist talk from Cork-based visual artist Lara Quinn, a recent graduate of MTU Crawford College of Art & Design, whose powerful work incorporates a sophisticated art historical lens and mythological sources within arresting imagery of feminine archetypes.

Afternoon Site Visit: Sample-Studios Gallery, The Lord Mayor’s Pavilion.

Belfast City Council Culture Team were delighted to host 130 guests at the Belfast Culture Forum on 13th June at City Hall. At the event they shared a short report covering work delivered by the team, and a glimpse at the sector’s overall achievements, since the start of their cultural strategy, A City Imagining 2020-2030.

At this mid-way point of the strategy, Belfast City Council Culture Team are keen to work more collaboratively and closely with the sector and wider partners to 2030 and beyond. The insights, sharing and learning at the Culture Forum are already helping inform their next implementation plans and they’re keen to hear more. As a follow up, Belfast City Council Culture Team will be hosting online 45 minute roundtables in August, the two options are:

Tuesday 12 August at 4pm, or
Thursday 21 August at 12noon

For the link to join your choice of the roundtable sessions, please email culture@belfastcity.gov.uk

Tickets: €15(+booking fee) includes glass of wine.

Join Growler, the alchemical 85-year-old Vulva, as she takes you on a ritual theatrical journey like no other within the setting of Luan Gallery’s current exhibition Soft Surge. Described as confronting and adorable all at once, she´ll have you laughing and crying in the same breath. Using storytelling, spoken word, song, and comedy, her mission is to give voice to the voiceless and transmute the shite out of collective intergenerational trauma. Growler leaves no stone unturned and no one left behind.

The State of Her
Created and performed by Dee Mulrooney
Musical accompaniment: Seán Mulrooney and Peter Heffernan

For more details and to book visit https://fareharbor.com/embeds/book/athlonecastle/items/542057/?full-items=yes

This event is kindly supported by the Arts Council

Muine Bheag Arts is excited to welcome visual artist Liliane Puthod and writer Ingrid Lyons. Following an initial pit stop at Muine Bheag Arts as part of tour de force itinerary, Liliane and Ingrid will broadcast a special K7 dans la 4L episode to coincide with COMMUNE. The listening/viewing session will take place at the Railway House, so feel free to sit back and relax along with complimentary tea, coffee and sandwiches while Ingrid and Liliane play cassette tapes live from the car and share anecdotes about their touring adventures. Alongside this public event, a temporary intervention will be visible at the Railway House’s billboard for the duration of the summer programme.

K7 dans la 4L is also a forum for discourse and debate around contemporary art, blurring the boundaries between audience and participant. During a live stream of the journey at the Railway House Bar, we open up a dialogue between tour de force and COMMUNE where K7 dans la 4L acts as a mobile arts club for broadcasting conversations around the contextualisation of contemporary art in rural Ireland. At our respective locations in Belfast vs. Bagenalstown and in the chat room of the gaming app, Twitch.

Tour de force is a national tour of Ireland by visual artist Liliane Puthod and writer Ingrid Lyons. At the wheel of Puthod’s late father’s Renault 4, tour de force is a celebration of culture and creativity in the format of a mapped adventure engaging with artists, musicians, mechanics, farmers, writers, archaeologists, craftspeople, academics and aficionados over a series of pit stops all around Ireland…a summer 2025 ‘buddy movie’. En route, the car becomes a mobile broadcasting unit with K7 dans la 4L which brings you interviews, artist talks and readings as well as cassette tapes played from a Renault Blaupunkt Audio 3000.

Produced by Liliane Puthod and Ingrid Lyons. Core personnel are Rosa Abbott, Public Relations, Gavin Fahy (1815fc) & Eddie Kenrick (City Rocker), Public Engagement. Mary Conlon, Curator and Director of The Dock is invited to respond with a series of texts to follow this nationwide cultural tour of Ireland. tour de force is supported by The Arts Council of Ireland Touring of Work Scheme.

Muine Bheag Arts is pleased to present COMMUNE from 15th – 25th August 2025. Taking place in and around the Muine Bheag Community Centre, the programme unfolds as a collection of live events, workshops and public interventions.

COMMUNE is a site for assembling and disseminating ideas, emerging from a central studio and gathering space shared by artists, community groups, collaborators and graduates-in-residence. COMMUNE can be understood as a series of small collective actions and gestures which reach towards systems of support and connection.

COMMUNE is kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Carlow Arts Office, Creative Ireland Carlow and Bagenalstown Creative Places

For more information and to book click here

Muine Bheag Arts is excited to host Card Club, a relaxed evening of card-playing led by Marian Balfe as part of COMMUNE. Marian will introduce her Sham Solitaire card deck and invite card-playing enthusiasts and non-enthusiasts to play with the unique deck. No card-playing experience required.

More information and booking here:
https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/card-club-marian-balfe-22nd-august-7pm-tickets-1511001017719?aff=oddtdtcreator

Marian Balfe is an artist from the midlands of Ireland. Her practice is wide-ranging and explores how painting, writing, sculpture, and printed ephemera may be used to reflect on place, identity, and value systems in society.

Muine Bheag Arts is pleased to present COMMUNE from 15th – 25th August 2025. Taking place in and around the Muine Bheag Community Centre, the programme unfolds as a collection of live events, workshops and public interventions.

COMMUNE is a site for assembling and disseminating ideas, emerging from a central studio and gathering space shared by artists, community groups, collaborators and graduates-in-residence. COMMUNE can be understood as a series of small collective actions and gestures which reach towards systems of support and connection.

COMMUNE is kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Carlow Arts Office, Creative Ireland Carlow and Bagenalstown Creative Places.

Guildhall Taphouse Studios is a new artist studio space in Derry city, set to open later this year. Our aim is to offer affordable workspaces to artists who are seriously engaged in the visual arts. We are a voluntary team of enthusiastic artists who are establishing the studios under the umbrella of Creative Village Arts.

We are hosting an informal, drop-in information session for artists on the 22nd August 2025, from 5-7pm where you can have a look around the studios, ask questions and meet the team.
You can RSVP and sign up for further information through the link below:

https://forms.gle/Lw7JQfaK3bVMxgG1A

Opening Launch: Wednesday 6th August at 7pm The Louth Plein Air Art Exhibition is immensely proud to showcase the fabulous artworks created en plein air over two days in the stunning Baltray and Anaverna House, Ravensdale. When you visit this show you shall see many different perspectives and compositions chosen by the artists to paint. The artists’ experience painting outdoors can vary from novice to professional – travelling from local areas, neighbouring counties and the UK to participate. The festival which began in 2021 during Covid times as a one-day event has since become two-days visiting Beaulieu House, Carlingford, Clogherhead, Ravensdale and Drogheda in the past. No booking Required

Clare Arts Office in conjunction with the Edna O’Brien Library in Scariff is delighted to present “Works in Pastel” by the artist Janet Buell.
Noted pastellist Janet Buell invites you to explore the highly pigmented medium of soft pastels at her fourth solo show Works in Pastel. It follows on from Janet’s successful exhibition at Cultúrlann Sweeney in Kilkee late last year.

Janet began working with soft pastels in early 2020 and has been developing her style and subject matter since then. Her subjects range from semi-abstract landscapes and still life to animals and gardenscapes.

Janet says: “The joy of using soft pastels is as much a part of my work as the subject matter itself. Unlike oil, acrylic and other wet mediums, soft pastels have to be mixed on the paper using different layering techniques. I like seeing those layers develop from initial concept through the messy middle, and onto a finished painting.”

Janet’s work has been featured in group and solo shows in the Clare Museum and KAVA Courthouse Gallery in Kinvara, Portunma Castle, the 126 in Galway, and Gort Arts Trail. Limelight Gallery in Oranmore, and at the Clifden Arts Festival.

A large reproduction of the artist’s painting Portrait of Basil as a Young Artist is currently featured along the Corrundulla Arts Trail in County Galway. Her work can also be seen at the Ennistymon Courthouse Gallery Summer Exhibition, which runs until September 6.

Janet will be hosting an informal artist talk at the Edna O’Brien Library Gallery on Tuesday 12th August from 11am to 1pm. Under Janet’s guidance, visitors will be able to try painting with pastels under Janet’s guidance.

The Edna O’Brien Library Gallery is open Monday through Saturday

Kerlin Gallery is pleased to present Pictures of You, guest curated by Miles Thurlow (Co-founder of WORKPLACE).

The exhibition brings together 16 international and multigenerational artists, whose of images, objects and actions evoke specific, often fleeting, moments whilst simultaneously revealing incisive reflections on time, memory and social structures.

Eve Ackroyd | Simeon Barclay | James Cabaniuk | Samuel Laurence Cunnane | Hollis Frampton | Ryan Gander | Nan Goldin | Merlin James | Sooim Jeong | Laura Lancaster | Rachel Lancaster | William McKeown | Robin Megannity | Wang Pei | Hannah Perry | Ki Yoong

Opening Reception: Thursday 3 July, 6–8pm
4 July – 23 August 2025.

To be spat back out

Bassam Issa Al-Sabah, Jennifer Mehigan and Caoimhín Gaffney

Officially launch at GOMA Waterford on Saturday 26 July, 4–6pm. All are welcome to attend.

To be spat back out is a three-person exhibition by Bassam Issa Al-Sabah, Jennifer Mehigan and Caoimhín Gaffney, where individual and collaborative practices overlap and interact across world building (fiction and CGI), world destroying (climate change) and worlds colliding (queer networks, and traumatic experiences that interrupt the present as spectres). Emerging out of their conversations and exchange of skills across the various technologies in their work, the images, objects, and animations they produce are often oriented towards the presentation of climate change in the media, with each artist exploring how ideas of ‘nature’ can be re-examined from a postcolonial and queer perspective.

To be spat back out revels in waste and excess, examining the expressions of excessive emotions as a queer strategy of resistance. Through storytelling, images and texts, reality bends to a breaking point; mirroring how trauma distorts, remakes and retells lived experience in its own image. The legacy of colonialism is examined as a material component of the climate crisis, and how the binary dynamics of indoor/outdoor and private/public spaces fail to imagine what is possible in the present.

Situated in relation to their practices, the exhibition employs non-linear storytelling, poetry, surreality, virtual reality, and daydreaming, growing into a new unpredictable formation as a collective body of work.

The exhibition will run from Saturday 26 July – Saturday 23 August 2025.

GOMA Gallery is open Tuesday–Saturday, 11am–5pm. Free entry, all welcome.

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Biographies

Bassam Issa Al-Sabah is a visual artist working with digital animation, painting, sculpture and textiles. often building installations that interrogate the intersection of fantasy and trauma, employing speculative worlds as a lens through which to explore the mechanisms of memory and identity formation. Frequently drawing on the visual lexicon of video games, anime, and popular culture, constructing alternative realities that function as both a means of escape and critical commentary.

Bassam Issa Al-Sabah works across digital animation, painting, sculpture, and textiles. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at FACT (2025) Transmediale (2024) The DHG (2022-24) Solstice Arts Centre (2019), the LAB (2018) and with the Glucksman as an offsite installation (2021). Group exhibitions include Golden Thread Gallery (2020), the Dock (2021), Queer Embodiment and Social Fabric at IMMA (2021-2022) and Futures at the RHA (2018). His work has also been shown internationally, including solo exhibitions at Gasworks (London, 2021) and the De La Warr Pavillion (UK, 2022), and group exhibitions and screenings at Transmediale (Berlin, 2021), EX-IS (South Korea, 2021), Jeu de Paume (Paris, 2021) and the Barbican (London, 2022).

Caoimhín Gaffney is an artist, filmmaker and writer, whose work has been shown in exhibitions and film festivals internationally. Gaffney’s practice comprises of film, analogue photography, writing and installation to allow for a cross-pollination of ideas between the works. Solo exhibitions include the Crawford Art Gallery, Block 336 in London, Contemporary Art Institute (CAI02) in Sapporo, and a touring exhibition of new work from the Butler Gallery to the Highlanes Gallery and Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre during 2024-2025. Their films have screened at FACT, Cork Film Festival, Korean Queer Film Festival, the European Media Arts Festival and the London Short Film Festival (receiving the Little White Lies award).

Gaffney graduated from the Royal College of Art’s MA Photography and Moving Image with distinction in 2011 and received their PhD from Ulster University’s School of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences in 2022. In 2014, they were an UNESCO-Aschberg laureate artist-in-residence at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art’s Changdong residency in South Korea, and in 2015 received a Sky Arts scholarship. Their work is featured in the collections of the Arts Council, the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Crawford Art Gallery.

Jennifer Mehigan
Using paint, inkjet, neural networks, her garden and her phone, Jennifer Mehigan’s prints and paintings blend new and old methods of making and processing the world – a relationship the artist views as a ‘strained mother-daughter’ dynamic. Mehigan’s wider practice also incorporates sculpture, filmmaking, perfumery, writing, parties, workshops, and flower farming, deploying sensory experience to explore the awkwardness of making images as they are overproduced and harvested. Her work occupies a space where pop culture, painterly gestures, digital materiality, autobiography, “public feelings” (after Ann Cvetkovich) and self-help literature can interact, allowing her to investigate, often through a non-human lens, how power manifests in the world.

Mehigan’s research focuses largely on closed systems and “defaults,” beginning with the computer and extending through domestic and public environments. Through this framework, she investigates themes of submission, withholding, oversharing, and the right to remain illegible—borrowing from GDPR legislation. Her work is particularly informed by omissions and misunderstandings of women’s contributions to horticulture and agriculture, examining the tension between excess and absence as it manifests within various enclosures, namely the field, the map, the screen and the picture frame.

Previously based in Singapore and Belfast, she now lives and works in the Slieve Felim mountains in Co. Limerick.

To be spat back out runs at GOMA Waterford from 26 July – 23 August 2025. All welcome!

For Harper the actual act of painting is what matters as he sees the actual process as one of exploration and discovery. He says “the process, the making excites me more than any end product”. He uses recognisable images to convey his ideas. His work always illustrates a structure and organisation. “The language of the painting has to make sense, just as spoken or written language makes sense”

Opening Launch: Wednesday 6th August at 7pm

The Louth Plein Air Art Exhibition is immensely proud to showcase the fabulous artworks created en plein air over two days in the stunning Baltray and Anaverna House, Ravensdale. When you visit this show you shall see many different perspectives and compositions chosen by the artists to paint.
The artists’ experience painting outdoors can vary from novice to professional – travelling from local areas, neighbouring counties and the UK to participate. The festival which began in 2021 during Covid times as a one-day event has since become two-days visiting Beaulieu House, Carlingford, Clogherhead, Ravensdale and Drogheda in the past.
No booking Required

Muine Bheag Arts is pleased to welcome graduates-in-residence Ciara Davitt, Nina Fitzgerald Graham and Mica Moroney. The artists will host a presentation of their work following their residency as part of the COMMUNE programme.

More information and booking here: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/presentation-graduates-in-residence-23rd-august-5pm-tickets-1511008209229?aff=oddtdtcreator

Ciara Davitt is a multi-disciplinary artist based between Kildare and Dublin. She aims to create cycles of taking, giving and sharing through her work. Her graduate work, “did you know gold comes from the stars” emerges from research on the socio-political conditions of extraction and land. Speaking to the heavy contrasts present between the timescales of the landscape and human productivity, harsh and soft materials, and fast and slow processes, are used.

Acidity of the soil, field recordings, casts of her Dad’s fingers and reclaimed metal are some of the things implemented-drawing out a conversation around rupture, time, wealth distribution and social impact.

Nina Fitzgerald Graham is a multi-disciplinary artist recently graduated from Sculpture and Expanded Practice in NCAD. Her practice is firmly rooted in Dublin’s North Inner City, exploring community formation and alienation, and our sensitivities to the stranger – human and non-human.

She employs a multisensory approach in art-making, to create embodied experience of these seemingly intangible issues. She has an experimental approach to material and medium, working across sculpture, interactive installation and performance art, as well as food-art as a form of interactive sculpture and socially engaged practice. Her work has been presented at a variety of interdisciplinary showcases, such as Alternating Currents at the Complex, EVA International Biennial and OpenEar Festival. Her work is socially and environmentally engaged, produced in tandem with her activities as a community organiser, and DIY/grassroots collaborator.

Mica Moroney is an artist from Dublin and a recent graduate of Sculpture at NCAD. Working across photography, video, sculpture, and installation, her practice explores the intersection of the poetic and the political. She is interested in the physical traces left by time, neglect, and regeneration, and how these processes mirror broader social and environmental tensions. Drawing from nature, urban environments and the urgency of our political moment, she feels a responsibility as an artist to reflect these concerns in her work.

Muine Bheag Arts is pleased to present COMMUNE from 15th – 25th August 2025. Taking place in and around the Muine Bheag Community Centre, the programme unfolds as a collection of live events, workshops and public interventions.

COMMUNE is a site for assembling and disseminating ideas, emerging from a central studio and gathering space shared by artists, community groups, collaborators and graduates-in-residence. COMMUNE can be understood as a series of small collective actions and gestures which reach towards systems of support and connection.

COMMUNE is kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Carlow Arts Office, Creative Ireland Carlow and Bagenalstown Creative Places

Sarah Buckley is hosting her second solo show ‘Everything I couldn’t leave behind’ in Blackwater Valley Makers, Fermoy, from the 12th July to the 24th August 2025. Sarah Buckley is a visual artist based in North Cork. Working mainly in textiles while also incorporating sculpture and installation, Sarah’s work is a personal exploration of childhood memory, trauma, experience and identity. Playing on emotive motifs of childhood, her work delves into the psychological impact of having two infantile haemangiomas (benign vascular birthmarks). This exploration has led her to expand her curiosity and enquiry into psychic wounds, social acceptance of difference and visual impairment. Interested in engaging discussion around childhood memory and perception, she uses the medium of textiles for its accessibility of understanding, associations of childhood and slow, mediative production. Her exploration of childhood memory, trauma, and identity through the medium of textiles offers a deeply personal yet universally resonant perspective, addressing the complexities of difference and the lingering impacts of early experiences.

Sarah graduated with a BA in Visual Art (Sherkin Island) in 2018 and is currently undertaking a Special Award in Textiles (Level 8) in the Crawford College of art and design. Her work has been exhibited in Ireland and the UK and she received an Arts Council Agility Award in 2021. She was curator for the 2024 EMERGE exhibition by Cork Craft and Design. Sh regularly facilitates workshops for adults and children in all things textiles.

Solomon Fine Art is delighted to host its annual Summer Group Exhibition. A vibrant mix of paintings, sculpture and print by Ireland’s leading artists.

Including work by John Behan RHA, Margo Banks, Leah Beggs, Comhghall Casey, Tom Climent, Clifford Collie, Eamon Colman, Julie Cusack, Orla de Bri, Ana Duncan, Margaret Egan, Bridget Flinn, Carol Hodder, Stephanie Hess, Bernadette Madden, Maggie Morrisson, Eilis O’Connell RHA, Helen O’Connell, Helen O’Sullivan – Tyrrell, Michael Quane RHA, Bob Quinn, John Short, Corban Walker, Michael Wann & many more.

This extensive and varied exhibition presented in our bright, city centre space represents the best of contemporary Irish art and is well worth visiting this summer.

Garrett Cormican’s latest exhibition, Trading Places, explores shifting perspectives – between cities, cultures, time, and identity. His paintings of Istanbul, a city where past and present collide, capture the pulse of its architecture, markets, and bustling trade routes. Vibrant still-life works, echoing both modernist and classical styles, celebrate the vitality of food, movement, and cultural exchange.

Cormican, a self-taught painter, curator, and author of Camille Souter: The Mirror in the Sea, has exhibited widely across Ireland and Northern Ireland.

For Harper the actual act of painting is what matters as he sees the actual process as one of exploration and discovery. He says “the process, the making excites me more than any end product”.
He uses recognisable images to convey his ideas. His work always illustrates a structure and organisation. “The language of the painting has to make sense, just as spoken or written language makes sense”

An Ciúnas / The Silence.
A solo exhibition by Marianne Keating.

A Sirius Arts Centre National Tour.

Wexford Arts Centre.
Tuesday 26th August – Wednesday 1st October 2025.

Opening Launch: Saturday, 23rd August at 2pm.

Wexford Arts Centre is pleased to present An Ciúnas / The Silence, a solo exhibition by artist Marianne Keating. The exhibition will run in the lower and upper galleries from Tuesday, 26th August, to Wednesday, 1st October, 2025.

Marianne Keating is a London-based Irish artist and researcher whose practice examines intersecting and overlooked narratives of Irish emigration to the Caribbean, particularly Jamaica, where the Irish were recruited as a new labour force after the abolition of enslavement. Keating’s multidisciplinary film installations combine a range of archival materials, found footage, newly shot footage, text, and sound.

An Ciúnas / The Silence traces multiple trajectories of migration from Ireland to both Jamaica and Britain from the period preceding the Great Famine of 1845–52 to the present day. It identifies catalytic moments in the history of the British Empire through the lenses of Ireland and Jamaica to illuminate how events from the past inform current politics and society. The work establishes a radical account of Ireland’s and Jamaica’s fights for self-determination, the social conditions of Ireland in the nineteenth century and today, the evolution of the Jamaican political system, and the power structures at play in both countries before and after independence.

An Ciúnas / The Silence is presented as a multichannel film installation and collages a myriad of moving and still images (often manipulated), either drawn from or referencing public records, online videos and photographs, and newspaper articles. The montage of fragmentary episodes moves back and forth in time and incorporates various creative modes, including textual graphics and audio effects. The overlaying of information, visuals, and sonic outputs amplifies the depicted perspectives, and the work’s presentation as a continuous loop undermines typical storytelling and the notion of a single official, dominant narrative.

An Ciúnas / The Silence was initially presented by The Showroom, London, in 2023-24. The Irish tour of the work is initiated and organised by Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, County Cork, and includes The Model in Sligo, Rua Red in Dublin, Limerick City Gallery of Art, and Wexford Arts Centre. The production of An Ciúnas / The Silence and its Irish tour are supported by The Arts Council.

The presentation of An Ciúnas / The Silence is curated by Miguel Amado, Director of Sirius Arts Centre, and the tour is managed by producer Rayne Booth.

Clare Langan, The Heart of a Tree, 2020.

HD digital film, 12 mins.

Saturday 23 August from 10.00am to 3.30pm.

This film contemplates the centrality of these giants of nature to the planet’s survival, and ours. Trees provide us with the very air we breathe. It is a glimpse into a future world where human beings have evolved and adapted in order to survive. Pandemics such as coronavirus are the result of humanity’s destruction of nature, according to leaders at the UN, WHO and WWF International, and the world has been ignoring this stark reality for decades.

The Heart of a Tree is a timely metaphor of a world turned upside down by our disregard for nature and the planet. It  is shot in a barren treeless landscape, which could either be a future vision of earth or another planet. The inhabitants negotiate their way though this inhospitable environment, harvesting air, the new gold. They plant trees on a deserted black beach, hoping to repopulate the planet with its source of oxygen.

Langan’s film is a glimpse into a future world where human beings have evolved and adapted in order to survive, exploring the disconnection between humankind and nature and ultimately within us.

Clare Langan (Dublin, 1967) is a significant Irish artist working within an international context. Her filmic work is often made in inhospitable locations and has been shown across the world, including at MoMA, Lyon Biennale, and Liverpool Biennial. She studied Fine Art at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin and with a Fulbright Scholarship, completed a film course at NYU. In 2017 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from The National University of Ireland and in 2019 she became a member of Aosdána

Official opening: Sunday 15 June, 3:00pm
Olivier Cornet Gallery, Dublin

Artists: Annika Berglund, Hugh Cummins, Mary A. Fitzgerald, David Fox, Nickie Hayden, Miriam McConnon, Sheila Naughton, Yanny Petters, Kelly Ratchford, Vicky Smith and Colin Eaton.

As this year marks the 100th anniversary of the 1925 Paris Art Deco Expo, the Bloomsday exhibition at the Olivier Cornet Gallery is an artists’ response to this period during which James Joyce’s Ulysses was published. The show features work by our gallery artists and invited artists who have explored exterior signs of art deco in Dublin, from architectural features in government buildings, through bathing shelters, libraries to hotels and cinemas, for instance. The show also showcases personal interpretations of that period from family lore through shared stories to current events.

This exhibition is part of this year’s official programme of the Bloomsday Festival organised by the James Joyce Centre Dublin. Out of Lines runs until the 24th of August 2025.

Image: Yanny Petters, ‘Daisy, The language of Flowers’, enamel on glass, 24.5cmx19.5cm. Based on the Language of Flowers mentioned in The Lotus Eaters chapter when Bloom gets a letter from Martha.

Three of my sculptures selected for Eco Aware Art Gallery ® Art Gallery
Our Vision Is To Reduce Waste In world through Art. We promote Artwork Made by Waste ,Recycle , And Found Material.

https://visit.virtualartgallery.com/ecoawareartgallery

This gallery exhibition centers on the textile installation by artist Varvara Keidan Shavrova, born in Soviet Russia and now living in England and Ireland. The installation features eight screen-printed felt blankets, each depicting images from her family photo album. This social and performative artwork invites interaction: visitors are encouraged to touch the blankets or drape them over their shoulders.

Juxtaposed with the artwork are historical objects from the Documentation Centre’s collection, including a tablecloth from East Prussia, a bedspread from Bohemia, and a small table cover from Brandenburg.

Textiles such as blankets, tablecloths, handkerchiefs, traditional costumes, coats, cloaks, scarves, and throws are poignant witnesses to hardship and suffering. They serve as relics of loss and deprivation, embodying the deeply human desire to connect with warmth, familiarity, and family. These objects offer a sense of solace against the painful experiences of displacement, loneliness, and uprootedness.

Varvara Keidan Shavrova’s work speaks to these shared experiences of millions of refugees, displaced persons, and emigrants, resonating with their enduring stories.

Exhibition Dates: February 2- November 16, 2025

IMMA Collection: Art as Agency is a major three-year display celebrating IMMA’s Permanent Collection as a source of agency and knowledge. Featuring over 100 artists, from the 1960s to the present, it highlights key works, including many recent acquisitions. This ambitious exhibition invites engagement and research over time, allowing for a rich durational experience of Ireland’s Modern and Contemporary Art Collection.

Through thematic, chronological, geographical, and media-based approaches, the exhibition examines how artworks connect across time and contexts, fostering new interpretations and relevance. Works from the 1960s to the 1980s evoke the foundational story of the Irish art world. While acknowledging the context of the modernist, predominantly male dominance of that era, the exhibition also spotlights the material innovation and socially engaged practices of others who persisted despite the relatively conservative status quo.

The exhibition also presents more recent practice that explores urgent global themes such as gender, hybridity, cultural histories, de-colonialism, diaspora, migration, food injustice, climate, and ecological change. Memory, imagination, and storytelling play pivotal roles in these works, offering generative ways to process fragmentation, dislocation, and survival in unfamiliar spaces. New and existing works in the IMMA grounds will extend these themes.

The exhibition includes a specially created ‘white cube’ gallery space inspired by Brian O’Doherty’s renowned series of essays Inside the White Cube – The Ideology of the Gallery Space (1976), that critiques the auratic, market-driven effects of the white cube gallery format. Likewise the choice of works curated for this space pushes back by highlighting works by Post-War American women, pioneering conceptualist artworks by Marcel Duchamp and Brian O’Doherty as well as a contemporary feminist response by Andrea Geyer.

By interweaving historical and contemporary narratives, Art as Agency invites audiences to reflect on the evolving meanings and possibilities of art in shaping our understanding of and action in the world.

Kith & Kin: The Quilts of Gee’s Bend is a group exhibition featuring the work of African American women from a small Alabama community whose work have become symbols of Black empowerment and cultural pride. This stunning collection of textile works celebrates African American culture and heritage.

28 Feb 2025–27 Oct 2025
Gallery 3

IMMA presents Kith & Kin: The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, the first exhibition of the Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers in Ireland, co-organised with Souls Grown Deep. The Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers, a group of African American women from a small Alabama community with a 200-year tradition of quilt making, have created quilts that hold both artistic and political significance. Artistically, their work is renowned for its improvisational style, bold colours, and abstract designs, often compared to modernist art movements like abstract expressionism. Their quilts, made from recycled fabrics, are deeply rooted in African American textile traditions and showcase unique creativity in geometric patterns.

Politically, the quilts reflect resilience and self-sufficiency, as they were born out of necessity in an economically deprived, racially segregated region. The civil rights movement brought attention to these women, who became symbols of Black empowerment and cultural pride. Their craft has been exhibited in museums worldwide, highlighting the importance of marginalised voices in American history. The quilts serve as both a celebration of African American heritage and a testament to the strength and creativity of women in the face of systemic oppression.

Through the public programme IMMA will explore parallels with the textile and quilt-making traditions in Ireland.

IMMA TALKS / Lecture & Launch
The Quilts of Gee’s Bend
Raina Lampkins-Fielder
Join Raina Lampkins-Fielder, chief curator for the Souls Grown Deep Foundation for a talk on the unique quilt making tradition of Gee’s Bend, a community of over five generations of Black American quiltmakers located on the banks of the Alabama River. This talk coincides with the launch of the exhibition Kith & Kin: The Quilts of Gee’s Bend.

Thurs 27 Feb 2025, 5pm – 6pm
Johnston Suite, IMMA
Booking required – Free

In 2025 Lismore Castle Arts will celebrate 20 years by presenting an exhibition dedicated to the theme of Kunstkammer, curated by art historian & writer, Robert O’Byrne.

Kunstkammer is a form of museum in which strange or rare objects are exhibited together, also known as a Cabinet of Curiosities. Once widespread throughout Europe, these private museums were renowned for featuring a broad range of objects, including Arteficialia (products of man) and Naturalia (products of nature) together with scientific instruments, clocks and automaton.

Priceless works of art were shown alongside strange curiosities, antiquities next to the latest inventions. They were united in their diversity, and their beauty. Kunstkammer at Lismore Castle is both a re-creation and a reinvention of the genre. Through a series of rooms, each one different in size and form, historical objects from private and public collections will share space with works by leading Irish and international contemporary artists.

The exhibition creates new encounters with the familiar and uncanny, inviting timely conversations about display, collections, and contemporary practice as the artefact of the future. Drawing on themes of display the work invites audiences to engage with contemporary art in an accessible way, referring to one of the original ambitions of the Cabinet of Curiosity to foster learning through encounter.

Robert O’Byrne is one of Ireland’s best known writers and lecturers specializing in the fine and decorative arts. A former Vice-President of the Irish Georgian Society, he is the author of more than a dozen books, a former columnist for Apollo magazine, and a contributor to both The Burlington Magazine and the Irish Arts Review. Robert has curated many exhibitions, including Ireland’s Fashion Radicals for The Little Museum in Dublin, and In Harmony with Nature: The Irish Country House Garden for the Irish Georgian Society, both of which drew record attendances. For the past twelve years, he has written an award-winning blog The Irish Aesthete.

The exhibition will be accompanied by an extensive programme of events, talks, screenings, and a far-reaching learning programme. A catalogue will be published in Summer 2025 to accompany the exhibition.

Pallas Projects/Studios are delighted to announce the participating artists in our Arts Council funded programme of Artist-Initiated Projects 2025. The series of 8 x 3-week exhibitions between March–November 2025 will present exhibitions of new work by:

Cillian Finnerty, Michella Randilu Perera, Niamh Coffey, Reuben Brown, Lucy Andrews, Kathryn Maguire, Gary Farrelly, Caroline Mac Cathmaoil.

Artist-Initiated Projects at Pallas Projects/Studios is an open-submission, annual gallery programme of 8 x 3-week exhibitions taking place between March and November 2025. This unique programme of funded, artist-initiated projects selected via open call is highly accessible to artists, with a focus on early career, emerging artists and recent graduates. Projects are supplemented with artists’ talks, texts, workshops or performances, and gallery visits by colleges and local schools.

Cillian Finnerty — March 27th – April 12th

Michella Randilu Perera — April 24th – May 10th

Niamh Coffey — May 22nd – June 7th

Reuben Brown — June 19th – 5th July

Lucy Andrews — July 17th – August 2nd

Kathryn Maguire — September 11th – 27th

Gary Farrelly — October 9th – 25th

Caroline Mac Cathmhaoil — 6th – 22nd November

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Pallas Projects/Studios is one of Ireland’s longest running artist-run spaces, with a dedicated tradition over 28 years towards the professional development of artists in a peer-led, supportive environment, providing opportunities for emerging and mid-career artists to develop and exhibit new work. PP/S have established a nationwide and international reputation among artists and organisations, and a public profile through successful and critically engaged exhibitions, publishing, collaborations and partnerships, and education programmes for schools. Recent projects include the 4-year research project and publication ‘Artist-Run Europe’, published by Onomatopee, Eindhoven in 2016, and the annual ‘Periodical Review’ exhibition now in its thirteenth year.

Thylacines, snakes and birds of prey are the unlikely animals that navigate fractured environments in the work of Ailbhe Ní Bhriain. Through ancient tales of the mythic underworld, and recurring images of stalactites and stalagmites, we experience scenes set in caves and tunnels populated by ethnic stereotypes.

‘Ní Bhriain seeks to locate our growing anxieties of crises within an odd, orphic world, where colonial and industrial legacies are fused with the consciousness of our current moment’ – Michael Dempsey.

A new series of works created for Hugh Lane Gallery, The Dream Pool Intervals is a meditation on the spectre of loss that haunts the contemporary imagination. Images of rehearsed poses and gestures, appropriated from the early days of photography (an era designed to project stability, status, worldliness and superiority) are assembled by Ní Bhriain in the works we encounter. They belie the individuals represented and concentrate instead on the construct of the medium of photography itself.

‘in the tapestries are images of destroyed architecture – gathered from multiple sources, icons of war and climate disaster that seem to define this period’ – Ailbhe Ní Bhriain.

Five large-scale jacquard tapestries form the exhibition’s centre and create a journey through emblematic iconography of past colonial repression and early technological aspirations. Powerful and eloquent, they convey complex political and dynastic messages that resist singular interpretation and echo the fragmented nature of how information is gathered and absorbed in our subconscious.

The Dream Pool Intervals is curated by Michael Dempsey, Head of Exhibitions, Hugh Lane Gallery, and will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue.

Ailbhe Ní Bhriain: The Dream Pool Intervals officially opens to the public on 27 March 2025 and runs until 28 September 2025. Admission is free.

Exhibition continues 25th March – 1st November 2025.

Jack Butler Yeats; The Dreaming Road
Tue. 25 Mar. – Sat. 1 Nov. 2025

The Dreaming Road presents audiences with the opportunity to trace Jack Butler Yeats’ extraordinary journey as an artist through four important, interconnected stages of his life and work. The show touches on the legacy of his unique artistic family, as well as the indelible influence of his early life in Sligo on his entire career. A selection of his politically charged paintings of the 1920s are on view alongside a number of the great masterpieces of his later years, which are noted for their wildly romantic and expressionistic style. While Jack was notably reluctant to discuss his creative practice, the exhibition is augmented with a number of statements by the artist himself that shed light on aspects of his attitudes and approaches to painting.

The Yeats Family was one of the most creative and accomplished in the literary and cultural world of early twentieth century Ireland. Patriarch, John Butler Yeats was distinguished as an artist, and particularly noted for his work in portraiture. Jack’s three siblings William, Susan, Elizabeth made significant contributions to literature, publishing and education throughout their lifetimes. Their mother, Susan Pollexfen, was the daughter of a wealthy Sligo merchant family, and imbued in her children a deep love for the people, landscape, and mythology of the county.

Jack Butler Yeats remains one of Ireland’s best loved and most accomplished artists. Unlike his siblings, Jack was sent to his maternal grandparents in Sligo, where he lived between the ages of eight and 16 years. He cut his creative teeth on the deep experience of Irish life he encountered in the town, and its western characters and dramatic landscape populated his works until the end of his life. While his subject matter remained the same throughout his long career, his style of painting, and the meaning he gave his works changed over time. His initial depictions of western life was marked by a strong sentimentality, which he expressed in watercolours during the period 1898–1910. This gave way, in his early oil period (1910–1925), to the pronounced realism that he developed to make political and social commentary.

Jack had been on a visit back to Sligo in 1898, when he witnessed some of the centenary re-enactments of the 1798 Rebellion. The spectacle of the event appealed to Jack’s love of the drama of everyday life, and he was inspired to create one of his first political scenes, Robert Emmet – Procession at Carricknagat, Co. Sligo, 1898. The more serious concern of Ireland’s nationhood that the centenary celebrations brought to the fore, also impacted the young artist. From 1898 onwards he became more convinced of the right to Irish self-determination. He went on to paint several, more overtly political works, some of which are also on view in this exhibition, culminating in the masterworks The Funeral of Harry Boland, 1922, and Communicating with Prisoners, c. 1924.

From the 1920s and into the later part of his career, another more marked development took hold. Jack’s subject matter became imbued with a deeper mysticism and symbolism. His handling of paint became much freer, he abandoned his palette and brush, and worked directly onto the canvas using only the primary colours. Throughout the 1940s, his paintings increasingly present us with apocalyptic visions. He developed a highly personal technique, which placed less emphasis on composition. He focused more on creating work in a ‘stream-of-consciousness’ style and termed the paintings he made in this way as ‘happenings’.

The exhibition continues until 1st November. In depth Curator’s Tours will run on each Saturday at 11am throughout June, July and August, and can be booked at the front desk or at www.themodel.ie.

We keep all of our exhibitions free of charge and open to everyone. We kindly ask that those who can afford to, make a donation of €5 for this exhibition. This can be done by contactless payment at the station in this gallery.

Exhibition continues 17th April – 16th August 2025.

Waterford Gallery of Art are delighted to present a new solo exhibition of retrospective paintings from 2010 – 2025 by Dungarvan based award winning artist, Catherine Barron. Salvaged metal plates, vintage 78rpm records, book covers, and playing cards serve as the artists canvas to reveal a deeply personal, as well as allegorical, biographical journey.

“The power of the imagination does not lie in its ability to invent, but to see more deeply, what is. And what is, is so awesome, you couldn’t make it up! “

Catherine Barron was born in Co. Carlow, lives and works in Dungarvan co. Waterford since 2017, and is represented by the Molesworth Gallery.

We are delighted to support Bishop Street Artists with this exhibition which will continue until August 15th.

Nine artists working within the beautiful Derry Walls will share their work.

Amanda Walker – Patsy Brennan – Catherine Ellis – Brian Farrell – Peter Davidson – Karl Porter – Kevin Horgan – Anneliese Gregg – Tearlach Rose.

Curated by Sinéad Smyth, Associate Artist at Echo Echo Dance Theatre.

You are invited to join us for the opening of this beautiful exhibition happening in Echo Echo, on the Walls of Derry City, on Friday, April 25th at 7pm.

Enjoy city related art from each artist in their own unique and personal style.

Event Image: Amanda Walker

Titanic Belfast has announced that in collaboration with the V&A it is set to host a free exhibition of the work of one of the foremost British artists of the 20th-century, Lucian Freud, from 2 May – 30 September 2025.

Belfast will be the first port of call of the Lucian Freud’s Etchings: A Creative Collaboration exhibition as part of a global tour. The world-leading visitor attraction is the only location on the island of Ireland that the artwork is being displayed.

Lucian Freud’s Etchings: A Creative Collaboration will feature highlights from a unique collection of etchings, many of which have never been previously exhibited. The trial proofs tell the story of Freud’s long collaboration with master printer, Marc Balakjian including one of his most contemplative and psychologically rich achievements in Donegal Man (2007). The sitter for Donegal Man was Pat Doherty, Chairman of Titanic Belfast, giving this exhibition a very special connection to the venue.

The pieces are on loan from the V&A, a family of museums dedicated to the power of creativity. Its mission is to champion design and creativity in all its forms, advance cultural knowledge, and inspire makers, creators and innovators everywhere. This is the first time the exhibition has ever been seen outside of London.

Judith Owens MBE, Chief Executive of Titanic Belfast said: “It’s an honour to announce that Titanic Belfast will be the first venue to host Lucian Freud’s Etchings: A Creative Collaboration as part of a global tour. We are thrilled to display never seen before pieces from one of the world’s most renowned artists and bring yet another reason for people to visit Belfast. The exhibition is particularly special for Titanic Belfast given its links to our Chairman Pat Doherty and will be free for people to view, and we are delighted to enhance our visitor experience over the busy summer period.”

Gill Saunders, Curator of the V&A’s Lucian Freud’s Etchings exhibition said: “Made over a period of 25 years, Lucian Freud’s extraordinary etchings demonstrate his developing mastery of this challenging medium. Shown together for the first time, this unique collection of trial proofs offers fascinating insights into Freud’s working process, and shows us how his achievements in print depended on his close collaboration with the master printer Marc Balakjian.”

This exhibition has been sponsored by Loftlines, Northern Ireland’s first build-to-rent development located in Titanic Quarter, following a £150m investment by Legal & General.

Adam Burney, Senior Fund Manager, Asset Management at L&G said: “Lucian Freud’s Etchings: A Creative Collaboration celebrates artistry, collaboration and culture — values that sit at the heart of Loftlines and L&G’s vision for a vibrant new community.

“We’re proud to support this world-class exhibition alongside our closest neighbour, Titanic Belfast, and to celebrate the city’s growing cultural momentum whilst marking the beginning of the Loftlines journey which will redefine city centre living here in Belfast.”

Lucian Freud’s Etchings: A Creative Collaboration will be open to the public daily from 2nd May – 30th September. The free exhibition is located within the Andrews Gallery on Level 2 of Titanic Belfast.

An ambitious new group exhibition, Staying with the Trouble, inspired by author and philosopher Donna Haraway’s seminal work of the same name, opens at IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) on Friday 2 May 2025. The exhibition features over 40 Irish and Ireland-based artists whose diverse practices explore urgent themes of our time.

Pushing against social norms, Staying with the Trouble challenges us and attempts to make sense of the present, questioning interspecies relationships, ideas of transformation, and renewal. The exhibition challenges human-centric narratives, advocating for a multi-species/multi-kin perspective through sculpture, film, painting, installation and performance.

The exhibition follows Haraway’s propositions such as “Making Kin”, “Composting” and “Sowing Worlds”, inviting visitors to rethink their connections with humans, animals, and ecosystems. Other propositions include “Critters”, emphasising the agency of non-human life, while “Techno-Apocalypse” critiques dystopian views on technology, proposing a more nuanced, interconnected future.
Commenting on the exhibition Mary Cremin, Head of Programming, IMMA, said; “Staying with the Trouble is a call to rethink, reshape our views — to stay present in complexity, to unlearn human-centric ways of seeing, and to lean into the radical potential of kinship across species, materials, and worlds. This exhibition is both a provocation and an invitation — to reimagine our place in a shared, entangled future.”
There will be a screening programme of film and moving image works as part of Living Canvas at IMMA, running throughout May to September.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a live performance series on Saturday 26 July 2025.

Artists featured in the exhibition include Farouk858, Kian Benson Bailes, George Bolster, Renèe Helèna Browne, Myrid Carten, Elizabeth Cope, Redd Ekks, Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, Andy Fitz, Laura Fitzgerald, Marie Foley, Paddy Graham, Aoibheann Greenan, Kerry Guinan, Austin Hearne, Atsushi Kaga, Michael Kane, Sam Keogh, Caoimhe Kilfeather, Diaa Langan, Áine Mac Giolla Bhríde, Marielle MacLeman, Alan Magee, Christopher Mahon, Michelle Malone, Colin Martin, Maria McKinney, Bea McMahon, Thaís Muniz, Bridget O’Gorman, Venus Patel, Samir Mahmood, Alice Rekab, Eoghan Ryan, Jacqui Shelton, Sonia Shiel, Katie Watchorn, Luke van Gelderen, amongst others.

Image credit: Venus Patel, ‘Still from Daisy: Prophet of the Apocalypse’ (2023). Courtesy of the Artist

Entangled Life
Curated by Cristina Nicotra
May–December 2025

Entangled Life, supported by Community Foundation Ireland, is a programme exploring the deep connections between climate, society, and the ecosystems where art and community intertwine. This initiative unravels heterogeneous climate and social topics, by understanding ecology as a complex web of relationships—between humans, the more-than-human world, and political and natural environments.

Entangled Life aims to provide space to facilitate a network of relationships, collaboration and engagement within the community. Over the course of 8 months the project will bring together community participants, artists and experts – including Lisa Fitzsimons (Strategy and Sustainability Lead at Irish Museum of Modern Art), Eileen Hutton PhD (Head of Art and Ecology at Burren College of Art), and Gareth Kennedy (artist, lecturer and lead coordinator on NCAD FIELD) – for a series of monthly panel talks, workshops and artistic interventions at Pallas Projects, culminating in an exhibition in December 2025.

The project draws inspiration from Merlin Sheldrake’s book of the same name, which explores the interconnected mycelium worlds that allow for unexpected possibilities, and Joanna Macy’s principles of ‘Active Hope’, which emphasize knowledge, compassion and action. With the final goal of promoting a decarbonised future, the project explores the links between climate issues and society, and shows how they are relevant in our daily life and our community.

The events series will provide diverse perspectives and room for direct interaction among participants through a non-linear, non-hierarchical approach, fostering exploration and critical thinking, considering mental wellbeing. This multidisciplinary initiative feeds the need to provide opportunities for influencing and activating change effectively. It allows the community to learn about climate issues, react, and co-create diverse, dynamic and unpredictable connections and inspirations. Feedback and reactions collected throughout the programme will be compiled into a toolkit report.

In all, seven topics will be unravelled and discussed through open panel discussions, workshops beginning with The Art of Just Transition on Wednesday 14th of May, with Rachel Fallon, Artist; Dr Egle Gusciute, Assistant Professor in Sociology, UCD; and Michelle Murphy, Research & Policy Analyst with Social Justice Ireland and member of Just Transition Commission.

Events Schedule

14th May The Art of Just Transition (Talk)

11th June Discovering biomaterials in art and society (Talk)

9th July Art and biomaterials (Workshop)

3rd September Beyond Words: communicating sustainability (Talk)

1st October Intersectionality in art and climate (Talk)

29th October Climate and Art: programming & advocacy (Talk)

27th November Entangled Life (Exhibition opening)

3rd December Climate crisis and mental health (Workshops)

17th December Climate activism and socially engaged art (Talk)

Events take place Wednesdays, 6–8pm. Participants are welcome to attend some or all events. Places can be booked via Eventbrite, but there will be a places for walk-ins subject to availability

VISUAL is pleased to present Dreamtime Ireland, an exhibition and research project by artist Sean Lynch at VISUAL and Carlow County Museum, and Artworks 2025, in conjunction with Carlow Arts Festival.

Drawn from historical and contemporary artworks and artefacts, over thirty presentations are spread throughout Carlow’s gallery and museum spaces, each exploring art’s potential to provoke, investigate and critique the shape and purpose of Irish culture.

With an emphasis on public art, social and conceptual practice, Dreamtime Ireland reveals an undercurrent of exchange and interaction between art and society, proposing artmaking as a way to live, make and share the complex world and environments we encounter today.

Featuring artworks and contributions from:

Seanie Barron, David Beattie, Mairéad Byrne, John Carson & Conor Kelly, Ruth Clinton and Niamh Moriarty, Richard Collier, Brian Connolly & Maurice O’Connell, Avril Corroon, Alan Counihan, Paddy Critchley, Martin Folan, Paul Gregg, Raymond Griffin, Kerry Guinan, Léann Herlihy, Michael Higgins & Juana Robles, Michele Horrigan & the EVA International archive, Bernadette Kiely, Sarah Lincoln, Irish Architectural Archive, Jane McCormack & Kingscourt Brick Sculpture Symposium, Yvonne McGuinness, Nollaig Molloy, Tom Molloy, Gina Moxley, NAMACO (Han Hogan and Donal Fullam), Tom Ó Caollaí, Tina O’Connell, Olivia Plender, Robin Price, Rónán Ó Raghallaigh and George Hooker, Seán O’Riordan, John Reardon, Theo Sims, Lily Van Oost, Hermione Wiltshire.

Dreamtime Ireland and Artworks 2025 span all of VISUAL’s gallery spaces and continues in Carlow County Museum.

Welcome to the artist job centre!

What job could you imagine in your wildest dreams? What if you got paid to put whoppee cushions on all the seats in the train, or make recordings of all the birds in your neighbourhood. Artists invent their own jobs.

Artists might spend everyday drawing or dancing; making sculptures in supermarkets or performances on football pitches. They might decide to make an enormous piece of clothing or bury a time capsule. Doing the job of an artist isn’t just about making artworks in galleries, it’s about asking big questions, dreaming up ideas and imagining new ways of being in the world.

This all-ages interactive space invites you to step into an imaginary universe where there are no rules and no limits to what an artist can do. Here, you get to imagine, design and create your very own artistic job — a role that lets you explore, question, play and express yourself.

To be Opened by Niamh Flanagan, Artist, Master Printer and Program Coordinator at Graphic Studio Dublin
On Wednesday 11th June 2025 at 7pm

Navigating Space is a solo exhibition by Maria Atanacković. Bringing together works on paper, wood, and linen, the exhibition explores the construction of space through assemblage and printmaking.

Atanacković’s practice is grounded in the process of breaking down and rebuilding form, using geometric shapes, layering, and composition to investigate the balance between structure and spontaneity.

This new body of work reflects her ongoing exploration of spatial relationships. Through bold, graphic elements and carefully considered arrangements, she creates abstract compositions that echo the ways we navigate our surroundings – both physically and emotionally. Some works have a precise, architectural quality, while others evolve through a more intuitive process, where forms emerge, shift, and settle into place.

Atanacković’s interest in space extends beyond the visible, delving into the underlying frameworks that shape our sense of place and belonging. She is particularly drawn to the tension between familiarity and displacement, and how we create connections within unfamiliar environments. Navigating Space considers these ideas through material and form, inviting the viewer to engage with the work as a process of movement and discovery.

Navigating Space by Maria Atanacković will be accompanied by a programme of engagement for young people, including a response space in our First Floor Gallery.

IMMA presents a solo exhibition by Sam Gilliam (1933 – 2022), one of the great innovators in post-war American painting, co-organised with the Sam Gilliam Foundation. Emerging in the mid-1960s, his canonical ‘Drape’ paintings merged painting, sculpture, and performance in conversation with architecture in entirely new ways. Suspending unstretched lengths of painted canvas from the walls or ceilings of exhibition spaces, Gilliam transformed his medium and the contexts in which it was viewed.

Sewing Fields highlights Gilliam’s connection to Ireland, where a transformative residency at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in the 1990s reshaped his artistic practice. Gilliam embraced new materials, working with pre-stained fabrics that he had shipped to Ireland, cutting and layering them into sculptural compositions. A collaboration with a local dressmaker further expanded this process, reinforcing his innovative fusion of painting and textile techniques.

The dramatic, undulating forms in his work resonate with the vastness and wildness of the Irish coast, featuring loose, flowing compositions that reflect the organic and unpredictable nature of the land and sea. Gilliam’s signature vibrant colour fields were influenced by the unique Irish light, resulting in atmospheric, almost translucent hues. By moving away from the rigid geometry of modernism, Gilliam’s work in Ireland fostered an intuitive dialogue with the surrounding environment, celebrating the physicality of painting and the emotional resonance of place through abstraction and materiality.

This exhibition continues IMMA’s engagement with artists whose work has received renewed attention and accolades in recent years that has included Howardena Pindell (2023), Derek Jarman (2019), and Frank Bowling (2018).

Visit The Douglas Hyde’s Summer exhibitions:
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Mohammed Sami ‘To Whom It May Concern’⁠
Gallery 1⁠
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The Artist’s Eye: Bas Jan Ader⁠
Gallery 2⁠
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13 June – 14 September 2025 ⁠

Mohammed Sami has gained recognition for his charged paintings exploring memory, conflict and loss through the familiar made strange. His first solo exhibition in Ireland brings together a group of major new canvases alongside a selection of works made over the last five years. He is one of four artists shortlisted for this year’s Turner Prize.⁠
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Working directly onto canvas with brushes, pallet knives and spray paint, Sami creates textures, surfaces and details building the composition as a whole. Mining personal experiences to ground his work and influenced by Arabic literature and poetry, Sami replaces images of trauma with oblique references to loss or conflict. Although absent of the human form, the settings, everyday objects, and shadows, in his paintings convey traces of human presence. He uses medium, scale, and title, each cultivating the other to create charged and haunting works.⁠
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Acknowledging the crucial role artists play in influencing and shaping other artistic practices, ‘The Artist’s Eye’ series asks those exhibiting in Gallery 1 to invite an artist of influence to present work in Gallery 2. In this instalment Mohammed Sami has selected the work of artist Bas Jan Ader entitled ‘I’m Too Sad To Tell You’ (1971) to be presented.⁠
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Visit The Douglas Hyde on Wednesday – Sunday 12pm – 5pm, Thursday 12pm – 6pm.

A Walk & Talk Tour with the Artist, facilitated by Gillian Lattimore of Irish Seed Savers will take place on Sat 12 Jul at 10am. All welcome.

Heirloom is an installation of works created by artist Rachel Doolin. The project stems from a culmination of experiential research undertaken during an Arctic-based residency programme, later informed by a creative partnership with the Irish Seed Savers Association.

In 2017, Doolin embarked on a research residency in Longyearbyen, an industrial frontier town situated in Svalbard, a remote Arctic archipelago located midway between continental Norway and the North Pole. Here, buried deep beneath a permafrost mountain, lies a backup of the world’s largest collection of agricultural biodiversity, cryogenically preserved within the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations estimates that 75% of the genetic diversity in agricultural crops has been lost since the 20th century. As risks from the climate crisis and global conflict escalate, seed banks are increasingly considered a precious resource that could one day prevent a worldwide food crisis.

Heirloom presents a series of visual, installation, and digital works that celebrate the ‘profundity of seeds’ by exploring the human thread that articulates the connection between our past, present, and future. It places the humble seed as a profound nexus in the nature-culture relationship.

This exhibition will be accompanied by a number of workshops and activities. Please see website for details.

Exhibition continues 11 June – September 2025.

SOFIA
Irish Printmaker, Paula Pohli, exhibits her Linocuts in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Paula is delighted to announce a special presentation of her handburnished prints in the LESSEDRA GALLERY (& Contemporary Art Projects).

Lessedra: Paula has a long engagement with the International Lessedra Annual Mini Print Exhibition. Organised by Georgi Kolev.

The Special presentation is on display 11th June until September 2025. During the 2025 Annual Print Mini Print Exhibition.
Launched by Georgi Kolev 11th June 2025

Official opening: Sunday 15 June, 3:00pm
Olivier Cornet Gallery, Dublin

Artists: Annika Berglund, Hugh Cummins, Mary A. Fitzgerald, David Fox, Nickie Hayden, Miriam McConnon, Sheila Naughton, Yanny Petters, Kelly Ratchford, Vicky Smith and Colin Eaton.

As this year marks the 100th anniversary of the 1925 Paris Art Deco Expo, the Bloomsday exhibition at the Olivier Cornet Gallery is an artists’ response to this period during which James Joyce’s Ulysses was published. The show features work by our gallery artists and invited artists who have explored exterior signs of art deco in Dublin, from architectural features in government buildings, through bathing shelters, libraries to hotels and cinemas, for instance. The show also showcases personal interpretations of that period from family lore through shared stories to current events.

This exhibition is part of this year’s official programme of the Bloomsday Festival organised by the James Joyce Centre Dublin. Out of Lines runs until the 24th of August 2025.

Image: Yanny Petters, ‘Daisy, The language of Flowers’, enamel on glass, 24.5cmx19.5cm. Based on the Language of Flowers mentioned in The Lotus Eaters chapter when Bloom gets a letter from Martha.

‘Art in Motion’ Exhibition to Open at Baile Mhuire Day Centre.

Tralee Art Group is delighted to announce their latest collaborative exhibition, ‘Art in Motion’, which will be officially opened on Tuesday, June 17th at 2.30pm at Baile Mhuire Day Centre, Balloonagh, Tralee. The opening will be led by special guest Paddy Garvey, Chairperson of Baile Mhuire, and all are welcome to attend. Guests can enjoy an afternoon of art, music and refreshments in a warm and inclusive setting.

This special exhibition is the result of a unique collaboration between members of Tralee Art Group and the clients of Baile Mhuire Day Centre, showcasing the creative energy and expression of both groups. Featuring a variety of works in different media, styles and subjects, Art in Motion celebrates movement, creativity, and community spirit.

TAG is committed to enriching the cultural life of Tralee and surrounding areas. The group regularly holds exhibitions, workshops, and community projects, and has built strong relationships with local organisations—including an ongoing volunteering partnership with Baile Mhuire.

This exhibition reflects that partnership, with art created not only by TAG members but also by clients of the Day Centre who engage weekly in creative workshops facilitated by the group volunteers from Tralee Art Group. The result is a joyful and inspiring collection of artworks, each piece telling its own story of imagination, connection, and collaboration.

All are welcome to attend the opening and celebrate this uplifting display of artistic expression in our community. The exhibition will run for a year and be available to the public weekdays between 4pm and 5pm.

We are delighted to bring an exhibition by Sophie Calle, one of the most celebrated and influential conceptual artists in the world, to audiences in Northern Ireland for the first time. Beyond the Gaze – Shared Perspectives presents video works (Voir la Mer, 2011) and photographic pieces (L’Hôtel, 1981-1983).

For Voir la mer, Sophie Calle invited inhabitants of Istanbul, who often originated from central Turkey, to see the sea for the first time. “I took 15 people of all ages, from kids to one man in his 80s … once we were safely by the sea, I instructed them to take away their hands and look at it. Then, when they were ready-for some it was five minutes and for others 15-they had to turn to me and let me look at those eyes that had just seen the sea.”

One of her most famous works, Calle took the photographs of strangers’ bedrooms that make up L’Hôtel over two years.

“On Monday, February 16, 1981, I was hired as a temporary chambermaid for three weeks in a Venetian hotel. I was assigned twelve bedrooms on the fourth floor. In the course of my cleaning duties, I examined the personal belongings of the hotel guests and observed through details lives which remained unknown to me. On Friday, March 6, the job came to an end.”*

The work presented in the exhibition has been generously loaned from the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, and supported by Galerie Perrotin.

Opening reception: Saturday, the 21st of June, 12 to 2pm.

“There is something musical in how Helen Blake’s work unfolds over time. This is true of the artist’s process; it is also true for the viewer. The longer you spend with Blake’s work, the more it yields. Blake paints meticulously, in oils, on an increasingly small scale in recent years, using canvases at times no larger than an average paperback. At first impression, these works convey a bright, orderly abstraction, composed of diamonds, lozenges, triangles, and jagged serrations, interlocked with a grid-like rectilinear formality. However, upon closer inspection, these repeated shapes and geometric impressions are not so streamlined or symmetrical as they appear; they are not the product of careful planning but the result of gradually accreted layers of colour, one laid one on top of the other, affecting one another without intermingling.”

Dr. Nathan O’Donnell
From ‘Recent Works’ Molesworth Gallery, March 2017

Helen Blake is a painter whose practice focuses on colour; engaging with rhythm and formalism, chance and deliberation.

Using a working method where process and contemplation guide the evolution of the work, she constructs overtly hand-made paintings which record and examine colour conversations within accumulating pattern structures, embracing accidents, flaws and discrepancies within their rhythms.

Starting from an imprecise grid structure, and rejecting the use of pre-drawn lines or tape, she build up layers of simple hand-painted lines and geometric shapes – square, triangle, rectangle, chevron – to create intricate surfaces where colour fragments can interact, sing together, harmonise, and sometimes jar.

Blake grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and graduated with an honours degree in Visual Art from Aberystwyth University, Wales. She lives and works in County Wicklow, Ireland. She was runner-up for the Contemporary British Painting Prize 2022.

Other awards include the Arts Council of Ireland Visual Arts Bursary Award; The Model Cara Award, Sligo; County Wicklow Visual Arts Open, Overall Winner, Mermaid Art Centre, Bray, adjudicated by Patrick T Murphy, Director, RHA. Eleven solo exhibitions to date include Molesworth Gallery, Dublin; Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast; Limerick Museum; Mermaid Art Centre, Bray; FUTURES14, RHA, Dublin.

Her paintings been shown in numerous exhibitions both nationally and internationally, including in the RHA Dublin and RA London Annual Exhibitions. She is represented by Molesworth Gallery, Dublin and Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast.

The Cash Shop is a curatorial project by artist Jim Ricks and is a community-engaged contemporary visual arts hub in South County Galway.

SOFT SURGE

Shirani Bolle | Ursula Burke | Rachel Fallon | Dee Mulrooney | Lucy Peters | Emily Waszak | The Irish Names Project.

The exhibition will be launched by Laura McCormack, Acting Arts Officer for Westmeath Arts Office on Friday 27th June at 6:00pm. All are welcome to attend. The exhibition will continue until Sunday 7th September.

SOFT SURGE is a group exhibition that critically engages with themes of identity, motherhood, women’s collectivity, grief, resistance, activism, and sociopolitical dissent within the context of contemporary Ireland. Through a range of practices and processes including sculpture, embroidery, weaving, knitting, tapestry, film, photography, and mixed media, the artists featured in this exhibition explore the soft power and radical potential of textiles.

SOFT SURGE features newly commissioned works by Emily Waszak and Dee Mulrooney, alongside existing works by contemporary female artists who mobilise cloth and fibre as both tactile material and affective framework. Drawing inspiration from the Moirae, the Greek Fates who spun, measured, and cut the threads of life, Soft Surge posits its exhibiting artists as weavers of narratives shaped by trauma, resilience, and embodied political agency.

This exhibition has been kindly supported by The Arts Council.

Exhibition Dates: 27.06.25 – 13.09.25
Launch Event: Friday, June 27th from 6pm

Exhibiting Artists: David Beattie, Ala Buisir, Cecilia Bullo, Pauline Cummins, Lauren Kelly, Maria McKinney, and Fiona Whelan

Together in Commune, is the first exhibition of Rua Red’s Studio Programme, curated by Marysia Wieckiewicz and featuring work by Rua Red’s current resident studio artists: David Beattie, Ala Buisir, Cecilia Bullo, Pauline Cummins, Lauren Kelly, Maria McKinney, and Fiona Whelan.

This exhibition marks an important moment for Rua Red, highlighting the depth and breadth of the practices nurtured and supported within these walls. Working closely with the curator in the months leading up to the exhibition, each artist presents work that reflects their individual practice, while collectively exploring themes central to socially engaged contemporary art.

Rua Red’s Studio Programme, awarded through panel selection for a period of one to three years, is a core pillar of the organisation’s mission; to support artists at every stage of their career. The studios at Rua Red provide artists with time, space, and a supportive community that encourages sustained and critical artistic practice. In turn, the presence of these artists in the building fundamentally shapes Rua Red as a centre for enquiry and experimentation. Their work contributes to a vibrant and evolving ecology of ideas that extends beyond the studio walls, enriching both the organisation and the wider cultural landscape of South Dublin County and beyond.

Love is blindly reaching out rhizoids and anchoring them to a rock is the newest manifestation of the world of Xenophon, a collaborative world-building project by McGibbon O’Lynn.

Rooted in the fictional world of the Xenothorpians – a fluid species mutating across vegetal, human, and ecological entanglement – the exhibition activates a multispecies romance beyond the species and the sexual. The project expands ideas of intimacy and relations through flings, courtships, longings, and liaisons with the garden.

The artistic duo consider how the gamification of dating has shaped how humans relate to one another, from 1960s TV shows like The Dating Game to 1990s board games like Dream Phone, and today’s swipe-based apps like Tinder and Bumble. These formats reduce love to strategy, speed, and surface, often reinforcing transactional and disposable dynamics. This exhibition responds to that shift, questioning what we lose when intimacy becomes a game. it proposes a radical reimagining of connection – towards a more expansive, inclusive, and multispecies form of love and relationality.

The audience is invited into this multispecies dating game through ritual, material, and speculative storytelling. The project asks: what new intimacies arise when we love without species’ boundaries?

Maeve O’Lynn is a writer, filmmaker and researcher based in Belfast. Siobhán McGibbon is a visual artist and researcher based in Cork. They began world-building together as McGibbon O’Lynn in 2015.

This project is supported by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Derry City & Strabane District Council and Cork County Council.

For more information visit CCADLD.org/exhibitions

Representing Nature – An Exhibition by Colin Watson RUA

ArtisAnn Gallery, 70 Bloomfield Avenue, Belfast, BT5 5AE

Wed 2nd July to Sat 30th August

Late Night Opening: WED 2nd July from 6 to 8pm

Wed – Sat: 11am to 5.30pm

( Gallery closed Fri July 11th and Sat July 12th)

www.artisann.org

The paintings in the show all have great personal significance to Colin. These smaller paintings are more spontaneous that his larger works, but there remains a desire to infuse each picture with a certain degree of mystery.

Although the choices of subject are personal, the paintings, hopefully, are also universal and have meaning beyond the painter’s initial inspiration.

Alongside studies towards fully realised paintings this exhibition also presents stand alone, spontaneous, intuitive works that directly respond to observed natural phenomena. This selection of works represents a cross section of his working methods beyond the finished paintings.

Colin Watson lives and works in Belfast. He has held seven solo exhibitions in London, as well as in Dublin, Northern Ireland and Morocco. In October 2008, Colin was invited by HRH The Prince of Wales to accompany him on the Royal Tour of Japan, Brunei and Indonesia, as his official Tour Artist.

Colin Watson has exhibited at the Royal Academy in London, the Royal Ulster Academy and the Royal Hibernian Academy, winning awards at the latter two including two gold medals at the Royal Ulster Academy, one awarded by the President of the Royal Academy, Sir Christopher Le Brun. He was also awarded the Ireland Fund of Great Britain Annual Arts Award in 1999. His work has been included in the BP Portrait Prize Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, The Royal Society of Portrait Painters annual exhibitions and at the Discerning Eye at the Mall Galleries in London.

Colin Watson’s work is held in collections worldwide, including the Royal Collection of His Majesty King Charles III and in the collection of the King of Morocco. He is also represented in a number of public collections, including the Ulster Museum, Moroccan Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, the Arts Council for Northern Ireland, the National Self-Portrait Collection of Ireland, Limerick and the Royal Geographical Society, London with a portrait of Sir Wilfred Thesiger, the British explorer and travel writer.

At noon Sat 26th July, as part of EastSide Arts Festival, there will be a special British Sign Language event with BSL interpretation of a gallery tour by gallery owner Dr Ann McVeigh. This is free, with no booking required.

All artworks are available to buy.

You can also buy art from this exhibition through the Own Art scheme which gives you an interest-free loan over 10 months (and you still get to take the art home immediately the exhibition ends).

ArtisAnn Gallery, 70 Bloomfield Avenue, Belfast, BT5 5AE
Wed – Sat: 11am to 5.30pm

Kerlin Gallery is pleased to present Pictures of You, guest curated by Miles Thurlow (Co-founder of WORKPLACE).

The exhibition brings together 16 international and multigenerational artists, whose of images, objects and actions evoke specific, often fleeting, moments whilst simultaneously revealing incisive reflections on time, memory and social structures.

Eve Ackroyd | Simeon Barclay | James Cabaniuk | Samuel Laurence Cunnane | Hollis Frampton | Ryan Gander | Nan Goldin | Merlin James | Sooim Jeong | Laura Lancaster | Rachel Lancaster | William McKeown | Robin Megannity | Wang Pei | Hannah Perry | Ki Yoong

Opening Reception: Thursday 3 July, 6–8pm
4 July – 23 August 2025.

The Courthouse Gallery Studios in Ennistymon is delighted to announce the opening of its Summer Open Exhibition, launching on Tuesday, July 4th, and running throughout the summer season.

Curated by acclaimed artist and curator Gabhann Dunne, the exhibition showcases an exciting and diverse collection of work from selected artists across Ireland. Visitors can expect a rich display of creativity, including paintings, sculpture, and mixed-media works, offering something for art lovers of all tastes.

The Summer Open celebrates both emerging and established artists, providing a platform for vibrant artistic voices and fresh perspectives. All exhibited artworks will also be available for purchase, making this an excellent opportunity for collectors and visitors to take home a piece of contemporary Irish art.

The Courthouse Gallery Studios invites the public to join them for the opening and enjoy an inspiring evening of art, community, and conversation.

Location:
The Courthouse Gallery & Studios
Ennistymon, Co. Clare, Ireland

Opening Reception:
Friday, July 4th, 2025

Mairead O’hEocha; Extra Alphabets
Sat. 5 Jul. – Sat. 20 Sep. 2025
Curated by Michael Hill

Mairead O’hEocha’s recent paintings cast an array of extraordinary and everyday tabletop scenes that float in and out from the facts and furnishings of their surrounds: birds invade a garden lunch, an octopus coils its tentacles in a trophy room, a fake loaf of bread sits solemnly at the tenement museum; a blizzard is observed from the comfort of a home workspace.

O’hEocha’s paintings consolidate a variety of recurring themes: how to depict ‘the natural world’ and our relationship with it, sensory encounters and digital space. Extra Alphabets is the largest gathering of O’hEocha’s work in an exhibition to date. The focus is on a group of new large-scale oil paintings, with a number of unseen works, plus a selection from international exhibitions, adding to this overview of the artist’s practice. The exhibition also includes painted interventions that charge the gallery’s walls, bringing O’hEocha’s work into close conversation with The Model’s unique architecture. These painted elements play with the perimeters of the exhibition space, so the cabinets, windows, animals, glass objects, tables and their horizon lines – O’hEocha’s register of motifs – expand, absorb and reflect her approach to painting, and its forms of display.\

Artist Talk
Sat. 5 Jul. 3pm

At the opening of the exhibition Ben Eastham will talk to Mairead O’hEocha about her work.

Ben Eastham is a writer and editor based in Rome and London. He is editor-in-chief of e-flux Criticism and co-founder of The White Review. His second book, The Imaginary Museum, was published in September 2020; his debut novel, The Floating World, is forthcoming with Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Maeve McCarthy, Returning / Heritage

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council is pleased to present Returning / Heritage, an exhibition of new artworks by Maeve McCarthy. The exhibition opens at the Municipal Gallery, dlr LexIcon in Dún Laoghaire on Sunday 6 July and runs until Wednesday 3 September 2025, admission is free.

The exhibition features new paintings, charcoal drawings, objects and a film. Through her work, McCarthy explores her mother’s family story, from their roots in County Down to her grandparents’ move from Kilmainham to Sandycove in the 1930s. She revisits gardens, houses, and familiar paths from the past. Some are still standing, others have changed or disappeared. The exhibition invites visitors to think about what is passed down through generations and how memories continue to live on even after physical places change. It is a gentle and thoughtful look at identity, belonging, and the power of letting go.

Returning / Heritage is the result of a dlr Visual Art Commission, which was awarded to Maeve McCarthy. The commission gives artists the opportunity to create a new body of work that is responsive to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. It is funded by the Arts Council and supported by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council.

Alongside the exhibition, dlr Arts Office will run a programme of accompanying talks, workshops and events. This offers many opportunities for people of all ages to interact with the gallery in different ways, learning about and trying out different art-making techniques. For further details, visit the website: www.dlrcoco.ie/arts

Contact: Ciara King/Carolyn Brown DLR Arts Office, T:236 2759 /
Email: arts@dlrcoco.ie

INTERRUPTED (JOURNEYS)
Brain Injury Matters NI
8 July– 30 August
Explore Interrupted (Journeys), a large-scale collaborative installation inspired by aural histories from Limavady. It tells the story of the lost Ross Sea Party, part of Shackleton’s Trans-Antarctic Expedition, highlighting courage, survival, and hope through an intricate origami display reflecting their perilous journey and determination.

EXHIBITION LAUNCH: Tuesday 8th July 2pm | Free Admission | All welcome
Brain Injury Matters (NI) was established in 2013 as an independent regional third sector organisation supporting, promoting and empowering those individuals and families affected by acquired brain injury.

For more information, please email ciara@braininjurymatters.org.uk or telephone 02890705125 or 07516629856

Exhibition continues 14 June – 16 August 2025.

These Magnetic Magnitudes
Cecilia Danell
Curated by Brenda McParland

These Magnetic Magnitudes is a solo exhibition of new and recent paintings, textiles, ceramics and film by Cecilia Danell, curated by Brenda McParland. The exhibition explores the overarching theme of contemporary landscapes and our unfulfilled yearning for that which is primal and unspoilt, filtered through the lens of psychogeography, Science Fiction and the sublime. In a practice which is rooted in materiality and process, the starting point for Danell’s work is a first-hand engagement with the landscape of the area in Sweden where she grew up. Bodily memories of moving through the places she depicts are mirrored in the physical endeavour of painting on a large scale, which creates its own spatial choreography. The landscapes Danell depicts are real places that she has encountered and photographed. However rather than offering a documentary view of these places, she uses fiction and the imaginary to speak about present and possible futures through a Science Fiction reading of the landscape. A new series of large paintings considers ideas around spectatorship and participation, inspired by the large nature dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. We are presented with scenes that invite the viewer to step into them, yet the 2D surfaces of her paintings prevent us. Danell continuously points back to this push and pull between realism, abstraction and the materiality of paint itself. She uses oil and acrylic on canvas in vivid shades of greens, purples and pinks, using acrylic washes and layers beneath the oil paint, and acrylic for drips because of its viscosity and velocity.

Danell is predominantly a painter, but also makes textile tapestries, ceramic and fabric sculptures and occasionally films. Danell recalls idyllic summer childhood memories of the Swedish countryside in her oversized fabric sculpture Lupin, 2024 which is both beautiful and treacherous as lupins are listed as an invasive species in Sweden, that should be eradicated when found in the wild. A series of ceramic sculptures in pastel shades and three large colourful appliqúe tapestries memorialise snow for future generations by playing with its properties of hiding and abstracting the underlying shapes. Echoing the snowy vistas in The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin, these are imaginary “ur-forms” that touch upon the primeval, merging colourful playfulness with a solemn reminder of climate change and the state of our planet. In the same room, the film Snow Day, 2025 (15 mins) camera/editing by Danell; soundtrack by Keith Wallace/Loner Deluxe captures a first-person view of the artist moving through the snowy woods in Sweden which is both immersive and atmospheric.

A hardback catalogue with texts by Aidan Dunne and Charity Coleman will be published by Solstice Arts Centre and Kevin Kavanagh in autumn 2025.

The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday 11am – 4pm.

Sarah Buckley is hosting her second solo show ‘Everything I couldn’t leave behind’ in Blackwater Valley Makers, Fermoy, from the 12th July to the 24th August 2025. Sarah Buckley is a visual artist based in North Cork. Working mainly in textiles while also incorporating sculpture and installation, Sarah’s work is a personal exploration of childhood memory, trauma, experience and identity. Playing on emotive motifs of childhood, her work delves into the psychological impact of having two infantile haemangiomas (benign vascular birthmarks). This exploration has led her to expand her curiosity and enquiry into psychic wounds, social acceptance of difference and visual impairment. Interested in engaging discussion around childhood memory and perception, she uses the medium of textiles for its accessibility of understanding, associations of childhood and slow, mediative production. Her exploration of childhood memory, trauma, and identity through the medium of textiles offers a deeply personal yet universally resonant perspective, addressing the complexities of difference and the lingering impacts of early experiences.

Sarah graduated with a BA in Visual Art (Sherkin Island) in 2018 and is currently undertaking a Special Award in Textiles (Level 8) in the Crawford College of art and design. Her work has been exhibited in Ireland and the UK and she received an Arts Council Agility Award in 2021. She was curator for the 2024 EMERGE exhibition by Cork Craft and Design. Sh regularly facilitates workshops for adults and children in all things textiles.

An exhibition from Crawford Art Gallery Collection selected by Salt & Pepper LGBTQI+ Art Collective with Toma McCullim

Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre – alongside the Salt & Pepper group (West Cork’s elder LGBTQI+ arts collective) – has partnered with artist Toma McCullim to curate an invigorating exhibition for summer 2025. Titled Grá, this exhibition celebrates love in all its forms and draws from the collection of Crawford Art Gallery. Accompanying this curated selection are responses to individual artworks in the exhibition made by artists from the Salt & Pepper Collective.

While this National Cultural Institution is closed for its major redevelopment – Transforming Crawford Art Gallery – the opportunity arose to share parts of its collection with other organisations across the island of Ireland to create meaningful encounters for the public. With the guidance of Dr. Michael Waldron Curator of Collections and Special Projects at Crawford Art Gallery, Salt & Pepper has explored the collection to shape a diverse, inclusive showcase for Uillinn, accompanied by a rich programme of talks, tours, workshops, and events.

Grá features key works from the 20th and 21st centuries, including the iconic Portrait of Fiona Shaw (2002) by Victoria Russell, The Red Rose (1923) by John Lavery, and Patrick Hennessy’s Self Portrait and Cat (1978), as well as Paul La Rocque’s In Her Own Garden (1998) and the photographic series Hi, Vis (2020-21) by Dragana Jurišić. The exhibition also includes works by, among others, Sara Baume, Margaret Clarke, Tom Climent, Gerard Dillon, Stephen Doyle, Mainie Jellett, Harry Kernoff, Janet Mullarney, Isabel Nolan, John Rainey, Patrick Scott, Edith Somerville, Niamh Swanton, and Mary Swanzy.

A highlight of the exhibition is the formation of the Grá Choir led by singer-songwriter Liz Clark in collaboration with Salt & Pepper. The choir will perform Beloved, a choral piece and a moving tribute to enduring love, composed by Carol Nelson for her wife Deborah, at the opening of the Grá exhibition. A further performance will take place in St. Barrahane’s Church, Castletownshend later in the summer.

Developed through a series of workshops by West Cork Rainbow Families in collaboration with Toma McCullim, the Grá Discovery Box will be available throughout the exhibition. It invites families to explore the exhibition together, encouraging interaction with the artwork and offering insights into the artists’ creative processes. It’s free to use, and no booking is required.

Developed and facilitated by artist Toma McCullim and health professional Sarah Cairns, In the Picture, le Grá is a dementia-friendly gallery programme thoughtfully designed for small groups. Participants are given time to explore the space and artwork at their own pace, with light refreshments included to support a relaxed and welcoming atmosphere.

Film screenings include a short film programme curated by Kai Fiáin reflecting the exhibition’s themes of intimacy, resistance and renewal on Saturday 23 August at 7.00pm; Aideen Barry’s Not to be Known (single channel film, 5.5 mins, Crawford Collection) on Friday 1 August from 10.00am to 4.30pm and Clare Langan’s The Heart of a Tree (HD digital film, 12 mins, Crawford Collection) on Saturday 23 August, 10.00am to 3.30pm.

Grá Gallery Talk and Tours with Dr. Michael Waldron will take place on Thursday 24 July at 1.00pm and Thursday 18 September at 1.00pm, free event, no booking necessary.

For further information on these and other events please see our web and social media channels.

Image: Paul La Rocque, In Her Own Garden. Collection Crawford Art Gallery, Cork. © the artist

This summer marks a transformative moment for Kilmacthomas as the historic Old Woollen Mill reopens its doors, with the first floor of the mill reimagined as the 8 Arch Gallery—a new cultural space in the heart of the town. To celebrate this reopening, the gallery proudly presents its inaugural exhibition, featuring work by seven of Ireland’s most significant living artists.
Charles Tyrell
Bernadette Kiely
Gerda Teljeur
Paul Mosse
Eilis O’Connell
Eamon Colman
Pat Harris
This landmark show brings together an exciting collection of drawings, paintings and sculptures. Each artist has been carefully selected for their contribution to the visual arts, and the unique voice they bring to Ireland’s evolving cultural narrative.

Exhibition continues 5 June – 31 August 2025.

‘All in Colour’, an exhibition of new paintings by Louise French at Shankill Road Library. It is the eleventh of Flax Art Studios’ annual exhibitions in partnership with the library – an opportunity for an artist to present their work in a community setting.

‘All in Colour’ is a new series of paintings made on surfaces with pre-existing imagery. Through experimentation with materials and processes, the paintings explore colour and form. Referring to still life and domestic representations of nature, the exhibition reflects on the act of painting itself.

Opening: Thursday 5 June 2025, 6.00pm–7.45pm
Exhibition dates: 5 June–31 August 2025

Opening hours:
Monday and Tuesday: 9.30am–5.30pm
Wednesday: 1pm–5.30pm
Thursday: 12–6pm
Friday: 9.30am–5.30pm
Saturday: 9.30am–1pm

Louise French completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at the National Art School, Australia, 2022. In March 2023 she joined Flax Art Studios (Belfast) Emerging Artist Programme. She has had solo exhibitions at Threshold Gallery, Belfast, and Ards Art Centre, Newtownards and group shows in Northern Ireland and London. In 2025 she was granted ACNI SIAP funding.

Samir Mahmood is a Pakistani artist based in Dublin. In his country of origin, Mahmood trained as a medical doctor, and he immigrated to Ireland in 2008 to undertake further studies in the field. But he abandoned this career to pursue art, and has been working as an artist in Ireland since the mid-2010s. The exhibition Symplegmatic Portals features numerous newly created works alongside an extensive selection of works made between 2017 and 2024. It is the largest presentation of the artist’s work to date.

Symplegmatic Portals is produced by SIRIUS and curated by Miguel Amado, Director.

LAUNCH EVENT

SIRIUS
Saturday, 12 July
2-4pm
Free; no booking required

Samir Mahmood in conversation with Seán Kissane, moderated by Miguel Amado

Samir Mahmood and Seán Kissane, Curator at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, discuss the exhibition’s vision, key works on display, the politics and aesthetics informing Mahmood’s practice and his wider artistic intentions.

Accessibility Note
Our building has accessibility limitations. There are three steps to the front door and a temporary wheelchair ramp is available upon request. Elements of this exhibition are accessed via stairs. Our toilets are also accessed via stairs and are not open to visitors. Public toilets are beside the Titanic Experience, on The Promenade.

Samir Mahmood’s practice encompasses painting, textiles, objects and video, with a particular focus on themes of identity, representation, bodily awareness and spiritual transformation. Specifically, he makes large-scale scrolls and small-format paintings. Both draw from the techniques and materials of miniature painting on the Indian subcontinent – for example rich detail, intricate storytelling and the use of wasli, a specific type of handmade paper, as a substrate. The typical imagery features landscapes or scenes of people that indicate power relations and structures, wildlife or mythology. Mahmood subverts all of this through motifs that explore his lived experience as a queer person with an Islamic upbringing.

Mahmood is influenced by multiple intellectual and visual references: Sufism (a chapter of Islam) and Christianity; the writings of the fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafez; architecture, ritual objects and practices, ceremonies, mysticism, folklore and iconographies from the Indian subcontinent and/or Islam; alternative theories of consciousness; and narratives of queer existence.

Mahmood depicts the male form in states of introspection or conviviality. Figures appear within or surrounded by nature – trees, vegetation, water, mountains and more – in varying expressions of intimacy. In addition, he shows figures in dialogue with sites of politics, including courthouses and administrative chambers, which suggest conservative customs and values. In the work, these bodies undergo a transcendence that speaks to a personal transformative potential, representing a union with the divine or, more broadly, a spiritual awakening, as well as a subversion of normative lifestyles.

A key feature of the exhibition is the series of large-scale scrolls portraying joyous celebrations of sexual freedom, and the garden as a symbol of paradise and utopia across religions. The artist calls these works ‘queerscapes’ – spaces of liberation where bodies are interacting, mutating, coalescing.

The title of the exhibition invokes yet more of Mahmood’s key interests. ‘Symplegma’ can mean renderings of sexual intercourse, composite drawings in miniature painting from the Indian subcontinent or anything that is entwined or entangled. Overall, these interpretations speak to the artist’s embrace of hybridity, especially gender indeterminacy and fluidity, as well as his own blended cultural experiences.

Samir Mahmood lives and works in Dublin, where he operates from Fire Station Artist’s Studios. He has held a solo show at Mart Gallery, Dublin, and has participated in group shows in venues such as the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Pallas Projects/Studios, Dublin; and The Glucksman, Cork. He holds a BA in Art from the Atlantic Technological University, Galway. His work is in the collection of University College Cork. He received awards from the Arts Council, including the Next Generation, Bursary and Agility.

In December 2017, artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen (b. 1969, London, UK) made an artwork in response to the fire that took place earlier that year on 14 June at Grenfell Tower, North Kensington, West London. 72 people died in the tragedy. Filming the tower before it was covered with hoarding, McQueen sought to make a record.

Following the fire, a Government Inquiry ran from September 2017 until September 2024. The resulting recommendations are yet to be implemented, meaning a similar tragedy could happen again. There is an ongoing criminal investigation, with potential charges including corporate manslaughter. No trials are expected until 2027 at the earliest, over a decade since the fire.

Grenfell was first presented in 2023 at Serpentine in London’s Kensington Gardens, following a period of private viewings, prioritising bereaved families and survivors. Following its presentation at Serpentine the work was placed in the care of Tate and the London Museum’s collections.

Please note screenings of Grenfell will take place at set times. Doors open fifteen minutes before the screening time and the screening will commence promptly. This work is intended to be seen from the start, so unfortunately latecomers cannot be admitted. The film is 24 minutes long.

The film contains close-up imagery of the tower six months after the fire. Please let a member of our team know if you need space to pause, rest and reflect afterwards.

Filming or photography is not permitted in the gallery space. Please ensure your phone is on silent.

This national tour is being coordinated by Tate in collaboration with the partner venues and is made possible thanks to public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England and from Art Fund.

Opening reception Friday 18 July, 5.30-7.30pm

Exhibition tour with Gallery Director, Brian Mac Domhnaill Saturday 09 August, 12pm

Running over six weeks, the Summer Exhibition at Lavit Gallery is an annual group show featuring painting, print, photography, sculpture and craft at a variety of price points. This year exhibiting artists and makers include Wendy Dison, Michael Duhan, Patricia Doherty, Grainne Dowling, Ana Duncan, James English, Angela Fewer, Felicia Garrivan, Etain Hickey, Antonio Julio Lopez Castro, Andrew Ludick, Damaris Lysaght, David Magee, Michaela McCann, Isobel McCarthy, Kate Mac Donagh, Peter McTigue, Paul Murphy, Claire O’Reilly, John O’Reilly, Jenny Richardson, Katherina Tremil, Zoe Velthuysen, Sarah Walker, Catherine Weld.

Cork Arts Society (est 1963), trading as Lavit Gallery, is a not-for-profit arts organisation, registered charity (CHY 13297) and CLG dedicated to promoting an appreciation of art in Cork City through the provision of a gallery space in which artists can exhibit their artwork for public patronage. Lavit Gallery also serves the art community and the public through its non-commercial activities such as artist talks, exhibition tours, continued professional development and the provision of two graduate awards given annually to students at MTU Crawford College of Art & Design.

Lucy Peters is a visual artist based in Co.Monaghan, Ireland. Her work consists of large textile sculptures, paper and text. She is interested in consumerism and how we hold value in certain items, especially clothing. Her sculptures are made by dismantling discarded items of clothing into material strips, which are then slowly woven and knotted into large textured forms. Each piece can take up to five months to complete, and each work is composed of material that has been recycled, donated or discarded.

Our First Solo Award offers support and funding at a key point in the careers of professional visual artists in the North East region who have yet to present a solo show.

Clare Arts Office in conjunction with the Edna O’Brien Library in Scariff is delighted to present “Works in Pastel” by the artist Janet Buell.
Noted pastellist Janet Buell invites you to explore the highly pigmented medium of soft pastels at her fourth solo show Works in Pastel. It follows on from Janet’s successful exhibition at Cultúrlann Sweeney in Kilkee late last year.

Janet began working with soft pastels in early 2020 and has been developing her style and subject matter since then. Her subjects range from semi-abstract landscapes and still life to animals and gardenscapes.

Janet says: “The joy of using soft pastels is as much a part of my work as the subject matter itself. Unlike oil, acrylic and other wet mediums, soft pastels have to be mixed on the paper using different layering techniques. I like seeing those layers develop from initial concept through the messy middle, and onto a finished painting.”

Janet’s work has been featured in group and solo shows in the Clare Museum and KAVA Courthouse Gallery in Kinvara, Portunma Castle, the 126 in Galway, and Gort Arts Trail. Limelight Gallery in Oranmore, and at the Clifden Arts Festival.

A large reproduction of the artist’s painting Portrait of Basil as a Young Artist is currently featured along the Corrundulla Arts Trail in County Galway. Her work can also be seen at the Ennistymon Courthouse Gallery Summer Exhibition, which runs until September 6.

Janet will be hosting an informal artist talk at the Edna O’Brien Library Gallery on Tuesday 12th August from 11am to 1pm. Under Janet’s guidance, visitors will be able to try painting with pastels under Janet’s guidance.

The Edna O’Brien Library Gallery is open Monday through Saturday

We are delighted to present Primate by Irish artist Daphne Wright. This work is one of a series of sculptures by Wright which explores the relationship between humans, animals and medicine. The sculpture was cast from a mould from a recently dead rhesus monkey at the scientific institution, Wisconsin National Primate Research Centre.

The artist explains, “To approach the problem of what we humans do by involving animals in our human life-saving research, the central act of making the artwork was to access this stage of the animal’s life-death via its direct physical form. The primate is our kin and our stand in. Not only in medicine but also for the heart and the imagination. It is an image of the human. Everything about how it might be like us is filled with pathos: its body, its proximity, its delicate biology, its expression. The rhesus monkey is our ancestor, our antecedent past and passed away, an object of reverie, honour, compassion and mourning.”

This notable addition to the collection continues to strengthen the Gallery’s mission of acquiring works by Irish and international artists to reflect evolving art practices. The current display of Primate coincides with Wright’s solo exhibition Deep Rooted Things in The Ashmolean Museum. Oxford which was conceived in partnership with Hugh Lane Gallery. The exhibition catalogue is available in the HLG Bookshop.

Solomon Fine Art is delighted to host its annual Summer Group Exhibition. A vibrant mix of paintings, sculpture and print by Ireland’s leading artists.

Including work by John Behan RHA, Margo Banks, Leah Beggs, Comhghall Casey, Tom Climent, Clifford Collie, Eamon Colman, Julie Cusack, Orla de Bri, Ana Duncan, Margaret Egan, Bridget Flinn, Carol Hodder, Stephanie Hess, Bernadette Madden, Maggie Morrisson, Eilis O’Connell RHA, Helen O’Connell, Helen O’Sullivan – Tyrrell, Michael Quane RHA, Bob Quinn, John Short, Corban Walker, Michael Wann & many more.

This extensive and varied exhibition presented in our bright, city centre space represents the best of contemporary Irish art and is well worth visiting this summer.

The Great Book of Ireland is an extraordinary vellum manuscript which contains the original work of 120 artists, 140 poets and nine composers.

All of the contributors were asked one thing – please convey your hopes, joys, fears, loves in being an Irish person at the turn of the second millennium. Described by former president, Mary Robinson, as “the Book of Kells of the second millennium”, artists and writers who contributed include Samuel Beckett, Eavan Boland, Cecily Brennan, Louis le Brocquy, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Barrie Cooke, Dorothy Cross, Daniel Day-Lewis, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Seamus Heaney, Eithne Jordan, Michael Longley, John Montague, Tony O’Malley, Kathy Prendergast, and Patrick Scott.

Visitors will have the opportunity to view the original manuscript as well as to use a digital touchscreen to turn the pages and explore the exceptional range of artistic practices brought together in this unique cultural artefact.

Visitors will have the opportunity to view the original manuscript as well as to use a digital touchscreen to turn the pages and explore the exceptional range of artistic practices brought together in this unique cultural artefact.

The Great Book of Ireland is supported by The Arts Council Ireland, University College Cork, and private philanthropy through Cork University Foundation.

In her new experimental moving image work The Glass Booth / An Both Gloine, artist Jenny Brady casts a cinematic gaze on the figure of the interpreter, exploring the interpreting profession and the contemporary landscape of interpretation. Through vignettes set in both extreme and familiar environments, the film portrays the processes of listening, speaking, and forgetting within acts of formal and informal interpretation. This film is a study of the complex, intersubjective nature of interpreters’ work, placing them at the centre, rather than intermediaries that blend into the background. Brady seeks to illuminate the interpretive act – an elaborate, sensory process of listening, decoding and responding.

The film emerges from research into the birth of the interpreting profession, which is less than a century old. Simultaneous interpretation technology, the language interpretation system that allows interpreters to hear and speak at the same time, was first employed prominently during the Nuremberg Trials that took place between 1945 and 1946, developing in direct relation to modern international diplomatic relations and the founding of the United Nations. This project builds on themes explored in Brady’s recent films, Music for Solo Performer (2022) and Receiver (2019) which looked at the complexities of technologically mediated communication.

The Glass Booth examines the art of interpretation as it extends to four different arenas; Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev meeting at the Geneva Summit in 1985, an asylum seeker interview at the International Protection Office, a Young Interpreters programme in a Dublin primary school, and a European conference interpreter translating into target languages in real time. In each setting, though stakes are high, slips are inevitable. One interpreter speaks of his reliance on muscle memory to do the job, likening his work in simultaneous interpretation to his former career as a paramedic and interest in rally driving. Probing the negotiation between intention and expression, the artwork lays bare how interpretation is essential to humankind’s survival. The film will be screened in two, alternating versions: one with subtitles and the other with audiovisual descriptions for blind or low vision audiences. The Glass Booth has been generously funded through the Arts Council’s Film Project Award and premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh 2025.
Text by Aisling Clark.

Screening Times: 11:00am, 11:40am, 12:20pm, 1:00pm, 1:40pm, 2:20pm, 3:00pm, 3:40pm, 4:20pm, 5:00pm.
The film will be screened in two, alternating versions: one with subtitles and the other with audiovisual descriptions for Blind or low vision audiences.

Sara Flynn, Sueharu Fukami, Shihoko Fukumoto, Joe Hogan, Eiko Kishi, Frances Lambe, Deirdre McLoughlin, O’Donnell + Tuomey, Satoru Ozaki, Sean Scully, Joseph Walsh, Kan Yasuda, Osamu Yokoyama.

Curated by Wahei Aoyama and Joseph Walsh.

RINN explores the culture of making and its relationship to place and time through the work of Irish and Japanese artists and architects. While each piece is a personal expression of form, their works are united by an immersion in the culture of making. Whether drawing on craft heritage – the materials and skills associated with place – or challenging new techniques and pursing new materials, they all share an intimate relationship with the handmade.

Rinn in Gaelic means place or a point – and in Japanese, the same word means circle, ring or circularity. Joseph Walsh has observed that the meaning in both languages strongly represents ideas inherent in his practice, of place and this moment in time, within a continuous cycle of time.

Presented by Making In by Joseph Walsh Studio as part of the Ireland Japan 2025 programme in partnership with the Government of Ireland, the exhibition premiered in April at both Ireland House and A Lighthouse called Kanata, Tokyo.

The Glucksman is proud to host the show on its return to Ireland.

RINN is supported by The Arts Council Ireland, University College Cork, Government of Ireland, Ireland Japan 2025, A Lighthouse Called Kanata, and private philanthropy through Cork University Foundation.

To be spat back out

Bassam Issa Al-Sabah, Jennifer Mehigan and Caoimhín Gaffney

Officially launch at GOMA Waterford on Saturday 26 July, 4–6pm. All are welcome to attend.

To be spat back out is a three-person exhibition by Bassam Issa Al-Sabah, Jennifer Mehigan and Caoimhín Gaffney, where individual and collaborative practices overlap and interact across world building (fiction and CGI), world destroying (climate change) and worlds colliding (queer networks, and traumatic experiences that interrupt the present as spectres). Emerging out of their conversations and exchange of skills across the various technologies in their work, the images, objects, and animations they produce are often oriented towards the presentation of climate change in the media, with each artist exploring how ideas of ‘nature’ can be re-examined from a postcolonial and queer perspective.

To be spat back out revels in waste and excess, examining the expressions of excessive emotions as a queer strategy of resistance. Through storytelling, images and texts, reality bends to a breaking point; mirroring how trauma distorts, remakes and retells lived experience in its own image. The legacy of colonialism is examined as a material component of the climate crisis, and how the binary dynamics of indoor/outdoor and private/public spaces fail to imagine what is possible in the present.

Situated in relation to their practices, the exhibition employs non-linear storytelling, poetry, surreality, virtual reality, and daydreaming, growing into a new unpredictable formation as a collective body of work.

The exhibition will run from Saturday 26 July – Saturday 23 August 2025.

GOMA Gallery is open Tuesday–Saturday, 11am–5pm. Free entry, all welcome.

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Biographies

Bassam Issa Al-Sabah is a visual artist working with digital animation, painting, sculpture and textiles. often building installations that interrogate the intersection of fantasy and trauma, employing speculative worlds as a lens through which to explore the mechanisms of memory and identity formation. Frequently drawing on the visual lexicon of video games, anime, and popular culture, constructing alternative realities that function as both a means of escape and critical commentary.

Bassam Issa Al-Sabah works across digital animation, painting, sculpture, and textiles. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at FACT (2025) Transmediale (2024) The DHG (2022-24) Solstice Arts Centre (2019), the LAB (2018) and with the Glucksman as an offsite installation (2021). Group exhibitions include Golden Thread Gallery (2020), the Dock (2021), Queer Embodiment and Social Fabric at IMMA (2021-2022) and Futures at the RHA (2018). His work has also been shown internationally, including solo exhibitions at Gasworks (London, 2021) and the De La Warr Pavillion (UK, 2022), and group exhibitions and screenings at Transmediale (Berlin, 2021), EX-IS (South Korea, 2021), Jeu de Paume (Paris, 2021) and the Barbican (London, 2022).

Caoimhín Gaffney is an artist, filmmaker and writer, whose work has been shown in exhibitions and film festivals internationally. Gaffney’s practice comprises of film, analogue photography, writing and installation to allow for a cross-pollination of ideas between the works. Solo exhibitions include the Crawford Art Gallery, Block 336 in London, Contemporary Art Institute (CAI02) in Sapporo, and a touring exhibition of new work from the Butler Gallery to the Highlanes Gallery and Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre during 2024-2025. Their films have screened at FACT, Cork Film Festival, Korean Queer Film Festival, the European Media Arts Festival and the London Short Film Festival (receiving the Little White Lies award).

Gaffney graduated from the Royal College of Art’s MA Photography and Moving Image with distinction in 2011 and received their PhD from Ulster University’s School of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences in 2022. In 2014, they were an UNESCO-Aschberg laureate artist-in-residence at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art’s Changdong residency in South Korea, and in 2015 received a Sky Arts scholarship. Their work is featured in the collections of the Arts Council, the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Crawford Art Gallery.

Jennifer Mehigan
Using paint, inkjet, neural networks, her garden and her phone, Jennifer Mehigan’s prints and paintings blend new and old methods of making and processing the world – a relationship the artist views as a ‘strained mother-daughter’ dynamic. Mehigan’s wider practice also incorporates sculpture, filmmaking, perfumery, writing, parties, workshops, and flower farming, deploying sensory experience to explore the awkwardness of making images as they are overproduced and harvested. Her work occupies a space where pop culture, painterly gestures, digital materiality, autobiography, “public feelings” (after Ann Cvetkovich) and self-help literature can interact, allowing her to investigate, often through a non-human lens, how power manifests in the world.

Mehigan’s research focuses largely on closed systems and “defaults,” beginning with the computer and extending through domestic and public environments. Through this framework, she investigates themes of submission, withholding, oversharing, and the right to remain illegible—borrowing from GDPR legislation. Her work is particularly informed by omissions and misunderstandings of women’s contributions to horticulture and agriculture, examining the tension between excess and absence as it manifests within various enclosures, namely the field, the map, the screen and the picture frame.

Previously based in Singapore and Belfast, she now lives and works in the Slieve Felim mountains in Co. Limerick.

To be spat back out runs at GOMA Waterford from 26 July – 23 August 2025. All welcome!

Exhibition continues 24 July – 17 August 2025.

Custom House Studios + Gallery cordially invites you to the official opening reception for Caught in Blue a solo exhibition by Sarah Wren Wilson. Please join us on the evening of Thursday 24th July 2025, 6-8pm, opening remarks by the artist.

This exhibition invites the viewer into a liminal space—a deep blue space within another space. Blue, with its associations of depth, vastness, and the unknown, creates an atmosphere of openness and quiet immersion.

By entering, the viewer becomes more than a passive observer; they become part of the artwork. This immersive encounter opens a dialogue between the inner and outer worlds, between what is seen and what is felt.

The paintings explore the relationship between the psyche and the external environment, reflecting how perception shapes our understanding of reality. Often, the outer world mirrors our internal landscape. A recurring motif—the net—serves as both container and filter: a web of memory, emotion, and subconscious patterns. It maps the inner world, and in doing so, transforms our perception of the outer one.

Image: Sarah Wren Wilson ‘Overtly Held’- Acrylic Ink on Canvas, 80x60cm, 2025